Reporter/camera man murdered.

[Mudhammam]

You can't separate the two, Nestor.  Lots of industrialized countries have crazy bastards.  What they do not have is easy access to guns.  Fuck the NRA.  It makes a difference.

As usual the answer is money.  In the 70's we began the process of deinstitutionalization on the theory that they could be treated more "efficiently" in smaller group homes where their medication would be monitored.  The problem there is that they forgot one thing.  These people are crazy.  They stop taking their meds.  And when they do all hell breaks loose.

The wonderful 'Murrican health system that the republicunts swear existed before Obamacare was never very effective on mental health issues.

And here we sit.

In a sea of blood.

I don't necessarily disagree with those claims, but I'm not sure exactly what is the point that you're trying to make in relation to homicide - unless you're exclusively concerned with gun violence? I do think that our gun culture is bat shit crazy, but let's not act like there weren't senseless murders prior to deinstitutionalization - in fact, there were more. This idea that there isn't enough gun control is a distraction from the root cause, which is that we as a society glorify violence and neglect those who need the most emotional and/or psychiatric care, including the causes of their mental anguish. The suggestion that the issue is not the people themselves but the weapon they choose, as Napoleon suggests, is silly. Gun violence is a problem here, but the murder rate, as far as I know, is not. That should tell us something.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Be sure to let us know when those British sheep get a constitution from those assholes in power in England.  The peasants must have been upset about kidney pies.

We have a constitution, just not one that is codified:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constituti...ed_Kingdom

KNOWING IS HALF THE BATTLE.

I'm not sure why you keep referring to those in the UK as sheep. Is it because we don't have guns everywhere? I mean, comparing like for like, I'd say that out rights here are probably more or less the same as yours, to be honest, though in our case if we break a leg we don't have to pay $20k to get it set and put in a cast.

[Napoléon]

The suggestion that the issue is not the people themselves but the weapon they choose, as Napoleon suggests, is silly. Gun violence is a problem here, but the murder rate, as far as I know, is not. That should tell us something.

You need to look up the facts then:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co...icide_rate

The US has a higher intentional homicide rate than most every other Western country. That's pretty bad when America is the most prosperous nation on Earth.



But regardless. The issue here is guns. It's not silly to suggest so when you yourself have just admitted in the very next sentence that gun violence is a problem. Your mistake is in assuming your underlying root causes are different to any other country's, but many more countries deal with the problem a lot better than yours does because they know that easy access to guns is the fucking problem and it can be solved.

Continually palming off attention away from guns and towards 'root causes' is ignoring the issue, not addressing it. 

For the record, I don't disagree that the root causes are violent culture or mental health or whatever else. My point is, these causes are not unique to the US, however they're the only civilised country on Earth who has a shooting phenomenon like they do. Which indicates there's something you yanks are missing. And it's so blindingly obvious what it is.

[Brian37]

17 pages of debate is bullshit. Making excuses for our current do nothing laws, is on par with evolution and climate change denial.. Gun death in America is of epidemic proportions.

[Napoléon]

I'm not sure why you keep referring to those in the UK as sheep.

It's because his redneck brain can't comprehend that another country has as much actual freedom as his does and yet we don't have the burning desire to qualify gun ownership as a right, like he does.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Well in that case I'm happy to be a sheep if it means a drastically reduced chance of being shot in the head by a madman whilst reporting for a local news station.

[Mudhammam]

I mean, comparing like for like, I'd say that out rights here are probably more or less the same as yours

Minus that whole freedom of the press thing. :-P

[Mudhammam]

17 pages of debate is bullshit. Making excuses for our current do nothing laws, is on par with evolution and climate change denial.. Gun death in America is of epidemic proportions.

Specifics. What specifics do you and Napoleon want done?

[Napoléon]

Specifics. What specifics do you and Napoleon want done?

Do what Australia did and do a compulsory buyback on all guns. Ignore the people trying to justify gun ownership and tell them tough shit. Too many people have died as a consequence of their 'right to bear arms'. Make another amendment if you have to. Don't tell me you can't change something that's called a fucking amendment.

For those that can actually justify a need for gun ownership then by all means grant it, but continually review such ownership and inspect the fuck out of that person.


I'm not an idiot however. Do I think this is gonna happen? No, unfortunately. Do I think in practise it will even work? Maybe, maybe not. But that's not a good enough reason not to try. People's attitudes obviously need to change, to be sure. But I guess you'll still have mass shootings taking place 50 years from now until you guys finally do address the problem. Probably even longer than that.

[The Grand Nudger]

Our amendments can't -remove- a right. Doesn't work like that. You're asking americans to say "Fuck your constitution", "to hell with your rule of law", "tough shit", etc. Pretty sure we don't have to do that in order to address our problem, and we can't do that anyway......so I guess that's a bullet dodged.

I think that if you considered the reality of both our rule of law, and the reality of guns and gun ownership here, you'd (we'd) be able to come up with a better idea. As I've said, the Mad Max gunstravanganza business is fantasy, our problem is very specific.

Remove the P2P loophole, cut the -legal- flow of firearms into the hands of those who create the problem. It's -already- illegal for a gun shop or manufacturer or box retailer to provide these people with firearms, and that's legislation which has already withstood the 2nd amendment challenge. There's a start.

Hey, there's another possibility, remove the culture of gun myth both sides of this debate lean on so heavily? Stop accepting either fantasy as a valid discourse or acceptable justification for legislation?

We are -failing-, completely failing a significant portion of our fellow americans. They have no reasonable expectation of enjoying the promise this country makes. That shooting someone is or seems to be a better bet, financially and socially, than education (which we fail to adequately address) or a 9-5 job (which we fail to adequately address) is our "gun problem". People not laboring under this burden own the crushing majority of the guns in the country, and their ownership, their guns, don't create the same outcomes. To be blunt, the correlation is entirely opposite. The places that you find the most guns and gun owners in this country are the places where you find the -fewest- gun deaths. It isn't, as some of them would claim, because they have guns, but because they are not being so thoroughly shit upon.

So maybe start with getting rid of that loophole, up above, because that has a direct and specific effect on the engine driving gun deaths. Maybe stop letting nuts with nutty ideas justify their pro or anti gun laws on the basis of those nutty ideas. Maybe focus on fixing the problem we actually have, spending political capital where it might achieve the desired effect, rather than scapegoating guns in order to avoid the uncomfortable fact that it is our failure to our fellow citizens, rather than some unavoidable outcome of gun ownership, that's the problem? We could do all of that without saying "fuck your constitution"....couldn't we?