Non-IT News Thread
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@JaredBusch said:
All of the shootings I am aware of have been lone mentally unstable individuals or individuals acting with the assistance of Islamic extremeist (another whack job nutter group).
Aren't these just ways to describe anyone who is shooting lots of people? Of course people shooting other people are mentally unstable. But they all come from groups with access to guns, or nearly all. And one could argue that people walking around brandishing weapons in public alone constitutes being mentally unstable.
I'm only saying that people who carry around guns are the ones that shoot people, most of the time.
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The issues that I'm pointing out are these two anecdotes:
- I never see anyone, mass shooter or just general gun nut, toting around this kind of hardware. It's rare enough that I've never once seen it in public.
- What case of mass shootings would the person on their way to the shooting have not been "just another gun nut" until they opened fire?
The only people I hear about carrying these weapons are the people who decided to use them (except that crazy guy in Atlanta.)
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@scottalanmiller said:
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
The US has a recent epidemic of mass shootings from these people.
Prove it.
All of the shootings I am aware of have been lone mentally unstable individuals or individuals acting with the assistance of Islamic extremeist (another whack job nutter group).
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-follman-rise-in-mass-shootings-20141020-story.html
Since 2011 a mass shooting happes every 64 days.
Every one of them has guns. That's how they become shootings. I'm not aware of any where they got the guns from the victims. They all had guns before they went to shoot everyone.
if anything this proves that citizens having guns out in public doesn't make put them in more danger... if anything it has proven the opposite (conceal carry holders saving other peoples lives).
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@scottalanmiller said:
@JaredBusch said:
All of the shootings I am aware of have been lone mentally unstable individuals or individuals acting with the assistance of Islamic extremeist (another whack job nutter group).
Aren't these just ways to describe anyone who is shooting lots of people? Of course people shooting other people are mentally unstable. But they all come from groups with access to guns, or nearly all. And one could argue that people walking around brandishing weapons in public alone constitutes being mentally unstable.
I'm only saying that people who carry around guns are the ones that shoot people, most of the time.
Uh, well, you can only be shot by someone carrying around guns, unless you take a gun from someone at the scene which you admitted rarely happens.
These nutters who are walking around with assault weapons around their shoulders aren't the ones that then later go out on killing sprees...
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
The US has a recent epidemic of mass shootings from these people.
Prove it.
All of the shootings I am aware of have been lone mentally unstable individuals or individuals acting with the assistance of Islamic extremeist (another whack job nutter group).
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-follman-rise-in-mass-shootings-20141020-story.html
Since 2011 a mass shooting happes every 64 days.
Every one of them has guns. That's how they become shootings. I'm not aware of any where they got the guns from the victims. They all had guns before they went to shoot everyone.
if anything this proves that citizens having guns out in public doesn't make put them in more danger... if anything it has proven the opposite (conceal carry holders saving other peoples lives).
How does it prove that? How many concealed carriers have stopped how many shootings compared to countries where they can't have guns at all? The numbers do not suggest what you are saying. Name any country where not having access to guns has led to more public shootings.
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@Dashrender said:
These nutters who are walking around with assault weapons around their shoulders aren't the ones that then later go out on killing sprees...
Aren't they? Isn't nearly every mass shooting some guy with an assault weapon on his shoulder right up until he starts shooting? I'm not saying that every one of these people is a mass murder yet, I'm saying that everyone shooting people with an assault weapon was one of these guys up until he pulled the trigger in public.
Am I missing something? How are the mass shooters not assault weapons carriers prior to the shootings?
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I'm only comparing us against ourselves.. not against other countries where guns are rare or flat out illegal.
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@Dashrender said:
if anything it has proven the opposite (conceal carry holders saving other peoples lives).
I'd rather have hundreds of people not shot than get to brag about saving a few once they are being shot at. Concealed weapon "successes" at the expense of deaths is still a loss.
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@Dashrender said:
I'm only comparing us against ourselves.. not against other countries where guns are rare or flat out illegal.
What is there to compare against? We are a single place with access to guns. You have to compare to where you can't have nutters with assault weapons walk up to the people that they are going to shoot with impunity to know if the ability to do so protects or harms.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
These nutters who are walking around with assault weapons around their shoulders aren't the ones that then later go out on killing sprees...
Aren't they? Isn't nearly every mass shooting some guy with an assault weapon on his shoulder right up until he starts shooting? I'm not saying that every one of these people is a mass murder yet, I'm saying that everyone shooting people with an assault weapon was one of these guys up until he pulled the trigger in public.
Am I missing something? How are the mass shooters not assault weapons carriers prior to the shootings?
because they aren't out in public scaring you. Those crazy people who go on shooting sprees are generally loners, rarely showing off their arsenal.
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You could make a far more compelling case by saying that Americans are just naturally violent, that we have a violent culture or that race and religious tensions cause mass violence and that the country is unique and that guns are an artifact of that, not the cause. That would be a far more compelling argument. But if you only look at gun figures, the proliferation of guns in the US is negative from every angle. The more guns you have, the more people die from violence.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
if anything it has proven the opposite (conceal carry holders saving other peoples lives).
I'd rather have hundreds of people not shot than get to brag about saving a few once they are being shot at. Concealed weapon "successes" at the expense of deaths is still a loss.
I wasn't bragging, but thanks for that.
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@Dashrender said:
Am I missing something? How are the mass shooters not assault weapons carriers prior to the shootings?
because they aren't out in public scaring you. Those crazy people who go on shooting sprees are generally loners, rarely showing off their arsenal.
I'm confused. They seem to be in public scaring people to me.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
if anything it has proven the opposite (conceal carry holders saving other peoples lives).
I'd rather have hundreds of people not shot than get to brag about saving a few once they are being shot at. Concealed weapon "successes" at the expense of deaths is still a loss.
I wasn't bragging, but thanks for that.
But you are using the "offset" of deaths from concealed to claim that guns protect people when the numbers show that they are killing people. Were you not promoting guns with that statement that guns were saving lives?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Am I missing something? How are the mass shooters not assault weapons carriers prior to the shootings?
because they aren't out in public scaring you. Those crazy people who go on shooting sprees are generally loners, rarely showing off their arsenal.
I'm confused. They seem to be in public scaring people to me.
I agree, I don't know what they are trying to accomplish by doing that.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Am I missing something? How are the mass shooters not assault weapons carriers prior to the shootings?
because they aren't out in public scaring you. Those crazy people who go on shooting sprees are generally loners, rarely showing off their arsenal.
I'm confused. They seem to be in public scaring people to me.
I agree, I don't know what they are trying to accomplish by doing that.
I mean the mass shooters. Aren't they exactly like everyone else with a gun, except that they've pulled the trigger? Both have assault or similar weapons. Both go in public with them. Both scare people. The only difference I see is that one has pulled the trigger.
I understand that often the nutters are roaming in packs like thugs and the mass shooters are often loaners. But do those groups of gun toaters never break up? And do the loaners never go about with other people? Is the pack mentality part of the bigger picture?
Take the guy in Atlanta's Airport.... he was a crazed loaner scaring people. The only thing that made him not a mass murderer was that he didn't decide to pull the trigger. He was a loon, he was terrified of "normal life", he had gotten his hands on a weapon.... maybe he even intended to do it and got scared. All I know is, there is no way to tell the pro gun people from the mass murders. They both put you at risk, they both scare you and you have no way to know which is which until it is too late.
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Trust me, before I started looking at the numbers and traveling a lot I used to be very "but having legal access to guns means the good guys have guns too, the bad guys always have guns" and I still believe that that makes a lot of sense. Having lots of people with concealed weapons does deter certain types of crime and there are awesome success stories. There was even that amazing story of the 11 year old in OK recently that knew how to use a gun and wasted a burglar going through her house about to probably kill her.
But the reality is, for every success story there turn out to be tons and tons of "kid shoots himself with parent's gun" or "parent accidentally shoots child" or "crazed mass murder nut job had no issue finding a high powered rifle because they are freaking everywhere." The successes are not offsetting the failures in the least. not in the real world.
It makes sense, in a way, to think that having guns prevents gun deaths. But evidence says otherwise, and very strongly.
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yes, I think the pack or more accurately loaners is a large part of the picture. Most of the gunmen you hear about, sure they might have had some friends, but they probably never went to gun rallies, instead they stayed home or out of the public light, stewing thinking they were being wronged.
Those willing to walk out in public generally probably have more self confidence, willing to stand up in public to harrasment they would receive, but the loaners do their best to avoid that.
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It's a lot like heroin. Heroin is terrible, right? It destroys lives. We should make it illegal. Make it impossible to get. Protect people from themselves.
Does that work? No, evidence says it does not. The evidence says that when we make heroin illegal we increase its market value, create a market for drug pushers, make it very hard for addicts to get help, make addicts fear the people who might help them, punish people who have already punished themselves and do nothing to help society but, in fact, encourage more damage. And more recently, we find that corruption around it because so lucrative that the FDA authorized making artificial heroin that is even more addicting and less helpful for treatments.
It makes sense to want to stop drug use. But evidence says that helping people with drug problems reduces crime AND reduces drug use and that making drugs illegal creates crime and actually end up funding the spread of drugs by making something with no natural value very lucrative.
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@Dashrender said:
Those willing to walk out in public generally probably have more self confidence, willing to stand up in public to harrasment they would receive, but the loaners do their best to avoid that.
Maybe that is true. But a lot of those people walking around with guns, I assume, are not in packs. Like the airport guy. Maybe he is the rarity.
The thing is.... needing a pack of heavily armed people suggests (to me at least) that these are truly timid, terrified people trying to bulk up their self confidence by carrying big weapons and scaring innocent people. They aren't standing up to harassment, they ARE the bullies (even if only mentally.) The exact things that I have a problem with is that they are scared bullies running in gangs or gang-like groups. Maybe that is better than loaners, but both are pretty bad.
