You can get guns anywhere, if you don't care about legality. Very hard in prison, but still possible. Any issues the USA has regarding firearms is due to culture, not availability. Switzerland, for example, has looser gun laws than the USA -basically every household has at least one military assault rifle or pistol, in fact- and while they have higher use of guns in domestic situations, they generally manage okay. That, however, is a whole topic to avoid, too emotional for too many people, and to intertwined with politics.


I edited this into my last post, but since there's been a few replies since then I'll cut it in here:

To summarise: "Bullying svcks :shrug:" doesn't cut it when it's a reoccurring major problem. I'm pragmatic enough to accept that certain things will always happen eventually, but that doesn't excuse lack of action. Better identification of at risk individuals and better (more accessible, higher quality, fixing wahtever is lacking) treatment would go a long way, I believe. Especially combined with a reduction in the stigma associated with taking care of one's health when it happens to be mental.

EDIT: Oh, and if Switzerland is too far away and too culturally different for you to accept as an example, look at Canada and it's comparable to the USA levels of gun ownership.

What's wrong with shooting targets? Just because you own guns and shoot them for the sport (as in targets) there's nothing wrong at all with guns.

You've obviously never been target shooting. I used to go target shooting all the time, yet I hate hunting (been hunting once and will never go again) and would never think of using my rifle to kill another human.

Unless you've actually shot a gun before, you are in no position to make an argument like this.

True, there's just something fundamentally wrong with humanity, which is old news anyway.

Sad that something like this happened again, though. A real shame.

I have shot guns before, in the Navy no less. Qualified M9, Shotgun, and AR-15. They're not toys that you just happen to have in your house and go out playing with whenever you want to. It'd be like building bombs as a hobby, just for fun.

I agree that they aren't toys, but that doesn't mean someone who can use them responsibly shouldn't have access to them. Responsible target shooting is harmless and a valid hobby.

Whoever the guy in this story was obviously had some pretty severe psychological issues and shouldn't have had any access to the gun in the first place. A more thorough background check might have caught it, but I see no reason to restrict access to responsible individuals.


And I also apologize for what I said last post, it's just I've seen so many ignorant people with no firearms experience beyond movies and news stories trying to make the same arguments, I jumped to conclusions a bit.

Like many things in the US, I feel Europe has better systems in place for. Take driving licenses for example. You can have barely 6 months of experience driving with a permit before you can get a license, after taking a laughable "test", then you look at places like Germany and the UK where it takes several years and exams before they give you a proper license to drive.

It's kind of the same thing with guns. If you really want one for target shooting you can afford to wait a year or two for background checks and instruction and exams before you get one.

And if there was more counseling and professional help that would play into the process too. "Oh hey, looks like this guy saw a counselor for depression and suicidal thoughts, maybe we should reject his application to purchase a gun."

Killing isn't a golf clubs primary purpose. It is a guns.


There have been plenty of screw ups in the Uk over guns.

Thats bull, a gun's purpose is self defense. Defending yourself doesn't mean shoot for the heart when you're attacked, it's to maim and maintain. Killing with guns is only if you are a criminal, fighting in a war, but a gun isn't made to slaughter people.

Sure, some gun's are made to hunt with, an animals an animal though and a persons a person; people kill animals for food or the sport of it, not because they like seeing the damn things suffer and die painful deaths.

It can be both....

Yup

Diminishing gun rights only hurts the average citizen.

If a person wants to murder someone or cause violence something like the law isn't going to stop them from getting a gun illegally.

Or they'll get a knife/explosives/poison if that doesn't pan out.

It doesn't mean they were designed to kill.

A shovel is intended to dig, but hey, a few hits to the head kills... OH MY GOD, THE SHOVEL WAS DESIGNED TO KILL THINGS!

They are excessively efficient at killing though. Joe Schmoe with a Neon Green Hat isn't likely to be able to kill two people up close with a knife, much less a police officer, with 1/10th the ease he has with a gun.

I mean we're not talking about some professional assassin who plans out his attacks and poisons people and knows golf-club-fu here.



Only the flaw with that argument is that a gun IS intended to kill. The ancient Chinese, Arabs, and Europeans didn't stick gunpowder and a metal ball in a metal tube for the purpose of hitting tin cans you know.

Uh. Slight disagreement there.

I imagine if you said that in the UK your gun licence would be swiftly removed and I agree with that.

But it is still a weapon designed for killing. There are far better options if you want to maim/incapacitate someone (a higher powered taser would do it). I see no logical reason as to why you would need a gun.


Um... Uh... What do you think people do in the military?

Still doesn't change the purpose of the weapon.

True. It just makes it harder and makes guns less easy to access.

edited for double post

A gun is not a weapon, it is a tool.

Being someone from San Francisco, who had gun bans in place for years, restricting access to guns don't work, nor do they deter someone from wanting to kill another person. Sorry. It's not the guns, it's the people who, for one reason or another, decide to use them on others. Criminals who want to attain a gun do not care about gun ban laws, it doesn't stop them from getting one, barring legally attaining guns only prevents those who would legally use one for the sake of protection from getting them -- that's not a smart idea to me.

Stuff like this is bound to happen. In the smaller picture, it's a horrendous act and I hope the shooter gets what's coming to them, but in the bigger picture this type of violence in the U.S. has continuously gone down consistently over the last several decades in spite of the country having a huge cache of guns, so if I were in a college down south I wouldn't be excessively worried about my college getting shot to pieces by a madman like what has happened twice now to VT in recent memory. The worst thing to do in an event like this is overreact.

So driving the sale of guns into an underground illegal market (which by the way, would give criminal groups another source of revenue) and depriving law-abiding citizens of the right to use them is a better solution?

I'm all for more extensive background checks and other such measures. But extensive gun control measures across the board is out of the question in my mind.

What about the other two?

If he really wanted to cause something terrible...he would learn to use the last two. Of course they might be a bit difficult to create and purchase the materials for.

Forbid it happens.

P.S. Neon Hat?

I don't live in the UK, I have lived elsewhere (I'm not american even though I live here, sigh), you agree with my license being taken away or maiming to maintain?



Protect, maintain peace, and serve in America and in Bahrain, I don't know what your countries military does. Protecting doesn't mean kill.

"The suspect, according to an earlier posting on the school's website, is described as a white male and was wearing gray sweatpants and a gray hat with a neon green brim."



Because pre-meditation doesn't factor into many of these kinds of crimes. He shot somebody, a police officer, ran and shot somebody else before tossing the weapon and continuing to run.

This doesn't sound like some criminal mastermind who was out to watch the world burn and kill as many people as he could.

Tools and weapons. Not disjoint sets



My country is involved in several wars. Wars involve killing people. Whatever the reasoning or hoped for outcome they involve pointing a gun at someone with the intent to kill.

I applaud your government if it doesn't invade other countries and think it is a step in the right direction



True, I think Switzerland has a similar gun ownership but a far far lower murder rate.

That's like saying a hammer is a weapon because I can easily kill someone with it.

So I assume you say a knife is a weapon, a saw is a weapon, and sticks of dynamite are also weapons?



Wars have always involved killing people, it's also always involved defending people. If one side allowed the use of firearms to kill and the other didn't, that would be nonsense and absurd, a gun will always beat a knife, people have to adapt and protect themselves using what they are being fought with, firearms just happen to be really good at doing more than maiming.

People made hammers to build things, such as shelter, guns were constructed to kill...