>be american
>get shot

I honestly forgot about that. That being said, I doubt they'd target a developmentally disabled center in America when there are better targets. Thanks for correcting me.

So since the suspects turn out to be Muslim this is suddenly about gun-control?

I'm looking on twitter and comparing this to the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado. It was called a hate crime caused by "toxic rhetoric" among also being called terrorism. However, when the suspects are Muslim this is now a gun issue.

nobody knew the ID of the shooters until today, and the avg american shooting always seems to end in gun control debates otherwise

i dont really mind the debates because something has to get done eventually, only problem is each side slings shit and nothing changes and then repeat ad infinitum

i just want to know how big the next tragedy has to be to get SOMETHING to change

its a bit nuanced and hard to follow :) but its possible for more than one factor to be a cause of something

Why do americans hate cops? In europe, atleast in the netherlands people actually feel protected by cops lol

In my opinion it's mostly because so many Americans still watch television to get news and the news outlets in America absolutely LOVE to spin propaganda through a fear campaign to get more viewers. I can only say if you want to get news while you're in America don't watch TV.

I agree, and I frequently visit family in Holland. The majority of people do not have a grudge against the police there.

I am trying to figure out why this is in anyway worse than homicide?

can we get mustard's big brain in here to dismiss all the retards

.

Clearly, some criminals obey some laws some of the time; this is the nature of incentive explicit in law enforcement. Even at the margins, this is valuable. Even imperfect efforts to restrict gun availability to high-risk people can reduce illegal gun use on the margin, even if these regulatory barriers can be overcome in a number of ways by those who are determined to obtain a gun. We have one of two mechanisms to explain the decrease in violent crime following gun control: either potential criminals are deterred from crime, or existing criminals are deterred from crime. Either way, you have gun reform that has produced meaningful, substantive improvements in the metrics society should care about. If it’s not clear that laws have the capacity to induce changes in behavior, I won’t be able to improve upon that position.

By definition, criminals don’t follow laws. This is no more a meaningful statement about social realities than the observation that dogs bark or cats meow. Every law could be refuted, and societies would swiftly descend into anarchy if it weren’t for reasonable policymakers. Laws against rape, murder, and theft, for example, are never followed by rapists, murderers, and thieves, but the fact that such people exist in society is the reason behind such regulations in the first place.

Among gun advocates forwarding this line of argument, there seems to be a serious lapse in moral intuition that privileges expediency over human lives. To think that the minor inconvenience of gun reforms such as background checks, waiting periods, and assault weapon bans is more burdensome than the death of thousands of innocent civilians each year reflects a mis-calibrated sense of what matters in the world.

Albert Einstein once said no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. If your reason for supporting gun ownership involves loyalty to a document written hundreds of years ago by slave-owning cross-dressers who pooped in holes, you have some explaining to do.

Can I actually say that Screw was technically right in saying that the police aren't here to protect, because there was this supreme court ruling: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect-someone.html

They have no duty to protect anyone at all, making the statement "protect and serve" somewhat null and void.

If you walk around and just watch programs on any of the major news channels it will focus on a minority of people who happen to get TV ratings when they are put in the spotlight. Someone once described it as "shock news" to elicit a reaction and get more ppl interested and increased viewers.

Americans do not hate our Police Officers. The news outlets will very rarely report on the 95% of incredibly brave and good things police officers do for us on a daily basis. Instead they will focus on some bad apples and the other 5% of negative police action. Being a police officer today is not an easy job and 1 mistake can be your last. Between fighting domestic terrorism and lone gunmen looking to make a name for themselves by murdering a cop, you have to take it all into account before you bash police officers.

Why? TV ratings and money. Everything in this country eventually boils down to the almighty dollar. Don't let yourself be fooled.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=VMqcLUqYqrs

The reason a pro-gun vs anti-gun debate never goes anywhere is because there are two hive-minds of people who are heavily set in their own beliefs. Some of those beliefs are rational while others may not be. Most anti-gun advocates suggest that guns have no place in society in this day. They suggest that guns kill people; that making guns less available for the general public will automatically lower gun violence. It does seem like that would happen, doesn't it?

The problem is that the people who are ready to slaughter innocent people don't care about what you ban. If we had banned firearms from the general public 100 years ago, I suspect that gun violence could possibly be much much lower than it is today. Banning guns now will likely do very little since there are already millions of unregistered and illegally owned firearms in place. Weapon traffickers have been stealing and pawning firearms for decades and if the government were to perform a sweeping snatch and grab of all firearms, they would get ONLY the legally registered ones and a few illegal ones they manage to accidentally find. At this point, you would still have hundreds of thousands of illegal firearms out there that wouldn't be terribly difficult to get, not to mention the violent people who would simply kill people with other legally obtainable equipment.

Anti-gun advocates bring up the fact that some countries have banned guns and now gun violence is much much lower! Pro-gun advocates bring up the fact that other countries have banned guns and have had little to no success in lowering violent crimes. The fact of this matter is that none of those countries are the USA. We don't know how it would go here. Would the grand total of innocent lives lost be lower? Would it be a better life; would people feel more safe? Who is to say? It's a hell of a freedom to give up when the result would simply be a massive social experiment with no guarantees.

On the other hand, for every mass shooting that occurs, there are a dozen instances where an armed citizen stopped a violent act either by killing the aggressor or scaring them off. It's up to each of us individually to decide whether killing the aggressor is justified in any cases of self defense, but it's definitely justified in many cases, in my opinion. Sadly, these self-defense type cases don't hit the media all too often because they don't promote the agenda the big corporations want to push.

I'm not going to cite dozens of sources, but here are a few:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-1-dead-in-shooting-at-gage-park-business-20151031-story.html
http://www.wbrc.com/story/28798881/teen-shot-dead-after-involvement-in-home-invasion
http://www.wcnc.com/story/news/crime/2015/02/23/authorities-homeowner-shoot-intruder-in-catawba-county/23879563/

Here's a map created by www.gunssavelives.net which is a litany of self-defense stories collected since August, 2011. Obviously these are only the stories about which the website is informed. There are undoubtedly more.
Guns Save Lives Map

Unfortunately, there are also tragedies where a person believes they are in danger, so they open fire on an assailant only to later find out that the assailant was not an assailant at all. Here is an anti-gun website dedicated to 'debunking' pro-gun arguments (for contrast):
http://www.armedwithreason.com/debunking-the-defensive-gun-use-myth/

My bottom line:
The right to bear arms was intended as a failsafe against an oppressive government and for self-defense against aggressors, foreign and domestic. I fully believe that it still has a place in today's society, and it's not something I'm ready to give up.

For the record, I'm not trying to argue pro vs. anti-gun here, I'm just trying to explain why pro-gun advocates are so passionate about their beliefs and are therefore so closed-minded and unwilling to change their stance.

http://i.imgur.com/NgnhnNT.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/JdbbDCT.png

phunk laying down THE LAW

why are people downvoting this? looks pretty solid and straightforward to me.

Sorry i'm not american so I don't understand cause the cops are different here. I've never heard of policemen actively beating people up in Scotland but I see in america a very small amount of cops like to beat up black people. I don't see how owning a gun will help anything though because the police officer will have one too and just kill you which is worse than getting beaten up. This is one of the reason police officers over here don't use guns and having the police not carry guns had worked out really well. We do of course have special armed forces who are trained for cases where guns are required. If the reason you think people need guns is to protect themselves from the police then why dont you do what we do over here and not arm regular police officers along with banning them from the public and just have an armed squad for cases where guns are required.

I wish america could just wake up and end this bullshit love they have for guns. Just make it illegal to own a firearm. This thread is full of Americans and people will disagree with me but in my country there are pretty much no guns. Police don't carry them and they don't even need to because we don't allow machines designed to kill people to be sold at Tesco.

I don't know what the deal is with you americans and your guns im getting people adding me on steam shouting insults to me because I don't think there is any point to owning a gun. If america just make all guns illegal less people are going to get murdered that must be a fact. Why do people want to keep the legal when making them illegal must do more good than harm. I think they should only be used for the army and special armed police forces. I believe this would be the best thing for america to do. It seems the most logical way and even Obama was begging you guys to listen to reason and just let go of your precious guns.

my fav argument is "yea i keep 15 guns in my house just in case i need to overthrow the government someday"

False equivalence between murder and other crimes both violent and non-violent. Misleading comparison between first world and developing nations as if the main difference between those sets of countries are gun ownership rates. Suggestion that innocent people dying is a justified cost to prevent crimes like burglary and theft. Lack of definition on what "protect a life" means and how those numbers were measured.

You have little to no reading comprehension abilities. There are so many illegal firearms already circulating the US black market that placing stricter gun ownership laws on law abiding citizens would be catastrophic. Armed criminals would be more effective and these mass shootings would occur more frequently if there were more places they could go without fear of anyone shooting back. The original intention of our second amendment was to allow the people to form a militia if necessary to fight back tyrannical oppression, but in today's society its necessary for us to own guns for combating criminals and psychopaths.

American mass shootings aren't a gun control issue, they are a mental health issue.

not trying to kindle a gun law flamewar but you can't just use other countries as examples where certain gun laws worked, because those countries are not america. things aren't as simple as just "doing the same thing another country did that we think worked", every country have different societies and environments.

"the government of today has no right to tell us how to live our lives, the government of 200 years ago already did!"

I stand by my opinion that there is absolutely no reason for a citizen of the USA to own a gun, Sure there are psychopaths out there who will shoot people for no reason but did having a gun help when he shot those people in the movie theatre when batman was playing. The chances of you running into a psychopath who wants to murder you are incredibly low.

"Armed criminals would be more effective and these mass shootings would occur more frequently if there were more places they could go without fear of anyone shooting back." - I don't think thats true, They will always find places to shoot people where no one can fight back. Making guns illegal isn't going to start more mass shootings that logic makes little sense to me

Banning guns is the best thing to do. I feel save where I live because I know a police man won't shoot me and the chances of me getting shot for no reason or next to none. If guns were banned in america and the police didn't carry them I would feel safe their as well. Also people who want a gun in case people break into their homes and steal their family or possessions are really dumb. If someone is stealing from you they probably really need the money so instead of murdering them you get weapons that can maim. No one has given me a valid reason for owning a gun where the positives of it outweigh the negatives.

The "good guy guns" argument comes out every time people discuss gun control.

This argument, broadly, suggests that law abiding citizens using guns to defend themselves is necessary for the safety of our society. The problem with the argument is not this logic, it is how this logic is misapplied to argue against stricter gun laws.

Strict Laws don't stop the "good guys"
We aren't banning guns outright any time soon, if a "good guy" seeks a firearm to defend himself, he can undergo the background check and wait the waiting period. There's no reasoning as to why stricter gun laws at all reduce the ability of a "good guy" to acquire a weapon for self defense.

Not all firearms are created equally
Assault weapons are designed and built to offensively take human life. Are good samaritans pulling out a full-auto AK-47 with an extended magazine to stop a mugger coming at them with a 9mm? Do you load up your glock with teflon coated "cop killer" bullets (banned in only 7 states, conditionally in 2 of those) to defend yourself against a home invader? What about a automatic shotgun with a 30 round mag? These are all legally purchasable in the united states, and I'd argue that these guns are rather obviously doing more harm than good in society. The only justification for owning military assault weapons is that they are fun, weigh that against mass shootings and choose for yourself.

Some might argue that these weapons are necessary as a "check on the power of the state", but in this day and age that is just a joke. You gonna stop the government from driving an armored personnel carrier through your front door while watching you jack off with thermal imaging, with a rifle? Obviously the public can't be allowed to own anything powerful enough to really check a modern military state, so this notion has become obsolete. Guns aren't how we keep the government accountable any more, and we really should not want them to be.

Moreover, our poor mental health system in the US is NOT evidence for guns being innocent. Mental health issues certainly have had a role to play in many mass shootings and expanding the way that we care for and recognize those with mental health troubles is definitely a necessary reform. This does not discount the problem that many of those shootings are carried out with legally purchased guns, including the recent tragedy in San Bernadino.

source: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/03/us/how-mass-shooters-got-their-guns.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=image&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Assuming the goal is to prevent mass shootings, doing so by identifying and stopping would-be shooters through a mental health system is nye impossible. That would require a fundamental rework of our health care system, one far more comprehensive than even what current single payer systems provide. In the case of mass-shootings, the perpetrators are often not criminals, with no access to the river of illegal guns that runs beneath every large American city. Stricter gun laws would in fact reduce these people's access to weapons, especially assault weapons with the greatest potential to take innocent lives in public spaces.

It should also be noted that the single most predictive variable when it comes to correlating firearm-related deaths is the gun ownership rate (http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(13)00444-0/abstract). We may live in a society filled to the brim with guns (more than one per man, woman, and child in America), but that isn't a necessary reality.

EDIT: One final thought: mass shootings are a relatively new phenomenon. They started slowly in America, and now we are at the point of having more than one every day on average this year. The media won't stop putting these psychopaths on a pedestal of hatred (giving them the attention that they crave), and so new shooters won't stop appearing. Its getting worse; part of the conversation at this point has to be about damage control.

TL;DR: Our current notion of the second amendment (any guns, any time, for any one) is beyond absurd. Restricting gun ownership is not a constitutional violation.