BREAKING: OREGON COLLEGE SHOOTING

[Cecelia]

[Minimalist]

[Clueless Morgan]

[AFTT47]

From CBS:

An online dating profile that appears to belong to Mercer lists his hobbies and interests as "Internet, killing zombies, movies, music, reading." Under ethnicity, it says "mixed race" and his relationship status says "single -- never married."

The profile also says he is currently in college and lives with his parents, is a Republican and not religious. It also says he doesn't smoke, drink or do drugs.

One of the groups on the site that he belongs to is called "Doesn't Like Organized Religion."


That's probably where they get the idea he was an atheist.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

[Kitan Etos]

And guns are good why?

Especially when any nutjob can get one and go on a killing spree?

[TheRocketSurgeon]

And guns are good why?

Especially when any nutjob can get one and go on a killing spree?

Well, how else  do you propose we grant our police officers an excuse to claim they were afraid enough of our minorities to shoot enough of them to keep the others in line out of fear of authority?

Dogdamn, Kitan, do you know nothing of American social structure!?  

[Kitan Etos]

Well, how else  do you propose we grant our police officers an excuse to claim they were afraid enough of our minorities to shoot enough of them to keep the others in line out of fear of authority?

Dogdamn, Kitan, do you know nothing of American social structure!?  

Okay, Zimmerman. >.>

[ApeNotKillApe]

Has any psychology expert ever figured out why some people want to murder kids in school?

Doing something like this is unimaginable to me. I like my guns but no matter what I had going on in my life this is something that I would never do. It just doesn't make sense to me.

So, what is going on in the heads of these screwed up people?

Mental and emotional development are genetic and environmental. Worship of death, devaluation of life, restriction of education, provides wide-spread pathological violence.

[Thumpalumpacus]

You might be surprised to learn that people who have no compunction about breaking a law by killing people aren't dissuaded by a law forbidding gun ownership.

It's kind of the definition of "criminal", you know.


No, it's an apt right that should have better limits.

Your first point is legitimate.

Second point, a right? Really? It's illegal to carry a gun in public here and I'm perfectly happy with that, never seen it as an infringement of my rights and I think most British people probably feel that way. Guess I'm not waking up paranoid someone is going to shoot me today. I can be comfortable in that assumption, yknow, given it's so hard to get guns here.

We don't have repeated incidents of crazy kids going into schools on a rampage, while America does. We have far lower gun crime rates than America does. We have tightly controlled gun laws, America doesn't. Not a coincidence.

You also have a different culture and society. Characterizing gun-owners as fearful is not really reflective of our society. Britain is a small country well-tamed long before the age of gunpowder; America is a trans-continental nation that was wilderness where a gun was as much a tool as a plough in its taming, which happened much more recently than the settling of Britain. It's all good and well to look down your nose, but the fact is that the backdrop renders the picture entirely different, and failing to take those differences into account is not very useful.


We certainly have a gun problem, and steps certainly must be taken. But the idea of importing a solution as if a cookie -cutter can cut the same shape is overly simplistic, to me.

This shooting didn't arise from a paranoid gun-owner. It is not a result of redneck gun culture. Pointing your finger at that makes, perhaps, for good talking points, but in the end generates more heat than light.

And yes, it is a right in America to own a gun. Look it up.