Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
If you have an email ending in @hotmail.com, @live.com or @outlook.com (or any other Microsoft-related domain), please consider changing it to another email provider; Microsoft decided to instantly block the server's IP, so emails can't be sent to these addresses.
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
If you use an @yahoo.com email or any related Yahoo services, they have blocked us also due to "user complaints"
-UE
Shooting in Connecticut
2012-12-14 14:55:34
edited 2012-12-14 14:55:34 in Meatspace
Ridi, Pagliaccio, sul tuo amore infranto!
Comments
I literally just found out about this, when I was at lunch.
Needless to say, this is horrific. Don't know what to say beyond that.
Well it did just happen, like a few hours or so ago.
Oh. Wow. CNN (and other stations, I'm sure) have already done a hell of a job getting coverage of it, then.
...didn't another shooting just happen a few days ago in Oregon?
Yeah, in a mall, apparently.
I have a feeling this won't change anything remotely resembling gun law reforms. People will continue to die, sadly. I hate that.
I really don't understand why these types of things don't make changes. Am I the only one that feels that way?
A lot of politicians are afraid to touch the issue.
Even when a lot of people die. In fact, when a lot of people die the normal trend is for people to feel scared, then buy MORE guns. I don't understand.
Well, the thing is, you can't effectively enforce a ban on guns in a country where they're legal now. I mean, what are you going to do, go door-to-door searching everyone's houses for them?
What does need to happen is more effective restrictions on certain types of guns, and more effective monitoring on who is buying guns and how much ammo they're buying and stuff.
Anyway, the thing that needs to be posted every time something like this happens:
Is in my next post because Youtube embeds later in a post still don't work.
Hmm. Posted it to Facebook, can't wait until someone misinterprets me. I mean, that's something that I had already known (and I think I probably learned it here) a while back, but it's good to have a concise way to sum up one of the issues behind these incidents.
The Onion sums it up pretty well.
And apparently the WBC are planning to picket. Just in case you weren't sure if they had any morals whatsoever.
. . . What? I mean, I'm well aware that their morals are warped (even if they just do this specifically to piss people off), but how can they find even the flimsiest religious pretense for picketing the funerals of elementary schoolers?
They don't care about your salvation, their only purpose is to tell everyone we're all fucked. Does that count as a religion? That's not what a religion is, let alone a branch of it.
What kind of religion exists only to provide NO salvation? Don't trick yourselves, this is anything but a church.
Oh, right. That would make a bit more sense, in this nonsensical situation.
Calvinists, which is exactly what the WBC pretends to be.
I saw this on the news this morning. I don't know what to say beyond saying that this is absolutely horrible. My thoughts go out to the parents of the murdered children especially.
@WBC:
I always thought that "fag enabler" sounded like some sort of copy protection thing.
^^^ Are Calvinists usually so full of hubris and shit?
Considering the main dogma of Calvinism is "God has already chosen who he will save, you probably aren't one of them, but act like you are anyway by being as pious as possible". I'd say yes.
WBC is a racket, journo sez: http://kanewj.com/wbc/ Argument sounds pretty convincing.
IIRC the Oregon shooter used guns that were already under heavy regulation, and the Connecticut one stole his parents' legally registered ones. Tighter registration and checks wouldn't have stopped either, and even going all the way up to a blanket ban (which would never happen) would've only stopped the latter.
We do need better background checks and qualification to get a firearm, but headline shootings are usually such extreme outlier circumstances that the kind of laws activists jump on them to push wouldn't have really done jack crap to stop it.
EDIT: From the details I'm gathering, Connecticut already has admirably stringent checks and safety course requirements, as well as an assault weapons ban. His parents probably owned the rifle before the ban took effect.
Worth nothing is that the town where this happened as a very very low level of murders.
While I think gun control is a legitimate element of this issue to discuss, I think it's a lesser concern between the elements of psychological health and the manner in which violence in handled in our society. Gun control in the USA probably does need to be tighter, but it's by far a secondary concern when compared to gun culture, where ownership of a gun is considered a means to power (even implicitly).
^I do agree gun culture needs a serious overhaul (especially our equation of masculinity and power) but the assumption that guns -items designed to kill- are not a part of the problem is stupid beyond belief.
There are plenty of countries with even more widespread gun ownership with lower rates of gun violence. So yeah, I feel pretty comfortable saying guns themselves are not part of the problem and we're wasting time scapegoating an object in lieu of looking at the social circumstances that made one (actually, the child of one) out of 50 million owners flip out.
What countries have more prevalent gun ownership and lower rates of gun violence?
(open question, not accusatory)
I have been thinking about this for the better part of the day and come to the conclusion that I cannot come to any conclusion on it.
I'm deeply sickened by the incident, honestly, and I think The Onion and a tweet from Flying Lotus of all people sum up my reaction pretty well. I just don't know what to think.
I think it's pretty obvious I'm pro-gun control, but I don't even know if that would've helped here. I mean I like to think it would, but I don't know. A lot of people have posted a lot of things and I just don't know who to believe about what.
This is obviously a societal issue or indicative of one, I think. Or maybe it's not, but it looks like one to me. I don't know. I just don't know anymore. I really, I really just don't. I don't even really know what I'm trying to say.
*sigh*
Guns themselves are definitely part of the problem, but messing with gun laws has to be done very carefully, and there's always the NRA trying to lobby for more free access to firearms. While much, much tighter gun control is a good ideal, it can't be implemented immediately and has to come in stages.
It's also true, however, that all weapons require human will behind them to function. As much as I lean towards an "anti-gun" point of view (for instance, I'm pleased that firearms are so severely restricted in Australia), both sides of this issue have legitimate points to make. And when it comes to the pro-gun crowd, I think the best point they make is that of human will -- the essence of this violence comes from the fact that someone willfully enacted severe violence on a number of other people for unclear motives, essentially turning this into a psychological issue moreso than one of weapons ownership.
My intention here isn't the trivialise the role current gun laws play or the issues that come with gun culture, but to boil this down to its most essential components. For instance, how easily firearms are accessed by the gunmen in these kinds of massacres is certainly a big issue, and such fast-firing, decisive weapons help enable these kinds of events. But all the same, this person must have had some kind of motive for killing over two dozen people, mostly children, and them committing suicide.
I think it should be clear to everyone, whether they fall in favour of or again gun ownership, that the more fundamental issue at play is one of mental health. While I think it's admirable that more and more people are getting behind extending limitations on gun ownership, it's an important conversation to have and I throw my lot in with them moreso than the other side of the debate, that conversation also threatens to intercept the conversation of mental health and the ways in which our culture and medical systems neglect to properly identify and treat those suffering from mental instability.