Mass shooting in the middle school Vladislav Ribnikar in Belgrade

[FlatAssembler]

@FlatAssembler 

1. Real-world experience demonstrates that gun control laws reduce the incidence of gun violence. When the US banned assault-type weapons, mass shootings dropped like a paralyzed falcon. When the ban expired, mass shootings increased. But it’s not just mass shootings: wherever and whenever access to firearms is restricted, gun violence of ALL types decreases. This is an observed fact, no subject to rational debate. No study needed.

2. Violent crime isn’t the same as gun crime.

3. This rubbish about ‘gun free zones’ is a red herring. A gun-free zone has bugger all to do with restrictions on gun ownership.

4. Again, I’m not going to re-chew Kleck’s study. All the points that need to have been made about it have already been made.

5. I am sick to death hearing about your linguistic studies.

6. Of COURSE having a mental illness is a good predictor of being a mass shooter. How can you sensibly argue that mass shooters are mentally healthy?

Boru

Why is my Prime Minister trying to ban some hunting rifles? Because it's merely about a power grab from the government. You give them an inch, they will take a thousand miles. This is why OP is justified in criticizing what liberal countries are doing. One school shooting or mass shooting should never be justification to change entire laws. It's one freakin event. And in the US, rifles account for a tiny, tiny percentage of actual gun crime, yet these are the weapons you see politicians calling weapons of war and trying to ban the most. It's clearly a power grab, as these weapons are hardly being used at all to kill folks. It's the hand guns killing all the folks.

I think politicians are just ignorant. I bet most of them haven't even heard of the Gary Kleck's 1995 study which concluded that, in the US, guns save 300k lives per year (compared to killing only around 40k people per year).

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

The trouble with that notion is that most mass shooters and most perpetrators of gun violence generally (American ones, at least) came by their guns legally.

Boru

I was talking about Norway and Macedonia. I don't know how those mass shooters there get their guns. I suspect the vast majority of them get them illegally.

Well, in both Norway and North Macedonia, people are legally allowed to purchase and own firearms, so there’s probably not much need for a black market.

This is interesting:

The firearm-related death rate in the US (including suicides, accidents and mass shootings) is 13.6 per 100 000. In North Macedonia, it’s 0.8. In Norway, it’s 0.1.

Boru

[The Architect Of Fate]

Most mass shooters buy their guns legally and cracking down on illegal arms sales is part of gun control.

[Irreligious Atheist]

What goalposts? You seemed to be making a big claim that something could have personally impacted your life because of where it took place, and you want laws changed because of your story here, but I'm just pointing out that no one can avoid the risk of death. Death happens all day long on the roads, and that doesn't scare even one of us from staying off the streets. All of life is a risk. That was my only point. Take it or leave it.

The point is that outright gun prohibition will, if the Gary Kleck's 1995 study is anywhere close to right (and I see no reason to think it's wrong by an order of magnitude), massively increase the risk of gun deaths, rather than decrease it. Gun prohibition which is supposed to make us safer would make us far less safe.

Personally, I support looser gun regulation in the US and anywhere else, whether it makes the country "safer" or not. Rights and freedoms come at a price and I can accept the current price.

As far as the anti-gunners, I concede to the argument that one is more likely to be shot or have a family member shot by having a gun in the home. Though much of that does come down to people being responsible with their guns or irresponsible with their guns. I've never personally owned a gun, but I wouldn't consider it irresponsible to bring a gun into the home. Keep them being manufactured and handed out like candy, as our dear friend Brian at the forums would say. The more guns, the merrier.

[The Grand Nudger]

Okay, let's diagnose it.  What do the mass shooting problems in macedonia, norway, and the us have in common?

A madman with a gun, obviously. Now, how they get their gun is another question. In the US, as far as I know, basically around 50% of mass shooters get their guns legally and the other 50% get them illegally. Now, how it is in Macedonia and Norway, I don't know.

Andrija Drežnjak, the shooter of the mass shooting in Đakovo in 2019, allegedly bought his gun on the black market. I have no idea whether guns on the black market here in Croatia are manufactured legally or illegally.

Kosta Kečmanović allegedly stole the gun from his father, who got his gun legally.

Terrorist, schmerrorist. Crazy is as crazy does.

Boru

You claimed that people with a diagnozed mental illness should not be allowed to have guns because they are significantly more likely to commit a mass shooting, right? Well, the evidence does not support that.

These posts were right on top of each other.  If the evidence does not support the madman with a gun theory, that can't be what they have in common.   It's not arcane knowledge or a well hidden state secret.  The US, Norway, and Macedonia all register mass shootings as a consequence of ethno-centric domestic terrorism.

[FlatAssembler]

The point is that outright gun prohibition will, if the Gary Kleck's 1995 study is anywhere close to right (and I see no reason to think it's wrong by an order of magnitude), massively increase the risk of gun deaths, rather than decrease it. Gun prohibition which is supposed to make us safer would make us far less safe.

His study isn't right though so this point is moot

Well, if a large sample size is what makes a study rigorous, then his study is more rigorous than any study in comparative linguistics can possibly be (as there are only 5'000 languages out there). If the p-value is what makes a study rigorous, then again it's way more rigorous than the vast majority of studies in comparative linguistics are (as most studies in comparative linguistics don't even try to calculate the p-value), and probably even more rigorous than my study is, since its p-value is estimated to be somewhere between 1/300 and 1/17, and I am quite sure his is even lower (although, to be honest, I haven't read his study). So, yeah, if you reject the Gary Kleck's study, in order to be consistent, you probably have to reject the entire field of comparative linguistics.

[The Architect Of Fate]

We have already been over this. That study is crap...

[FlatAssembler]

I was talking about Norway and Macedonia. I don't know how those mass shooters there get their guns. I suspect the vast majority of them get them illegally.

Well, in both Norway and North Macedonia, people are legally allowed to purchase and own firearms, so there’s probably not much need for a black market.

This is interesting:

The firearm-related death rate in the US (including suicides, accidents and mass shootings) is 13.6 per 100 000. In North Macedonia, it’s 0.8. In Norway, it’s 0.1.

Boru

Since around 50% of mass shooters in the US get their guns illegally, and it's a lot easier to legally acquire a gun in the US than in Norway or North Macedonia, I'd expect that the vast majority of mass shooters in Norway and North Macedonia get their guns illegally.

Yeah, mass shootings make a tiny proportion of total gun-related deaths. Most of the gun-related deaths are suicides. But we were talking about mass shootings. The Twitter post you posted a screenshot of claimed that the rest of the world (countries other than the US) don't have mass shootings. Which is blatantly false, Macedonia and Norway have more mass shootings per capita.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Personally, I support looser gun regulation in the US and anywhere else, whether it makes the country "safer" or not. Rights and freedoms come at a price and I can accept the current price.

Lol as if you get to be the one that gets to say what price in human life is acceptable. Sorry, the price of your twisted view of freedom is too high.

[The Grand Nudger]

If IA says the entire field of linguistics is only as good as one novel study, who are we to argue?

There's, essentially, a mirror image study with the same problem of novel sampling that people like to point at and say the brady bill worked. I consider both of these things part of the full theater experience. On the one hand, we are expected to believe that there is some large quota of people who would otherwise die if they did not have a gun at a particular moment...and on the other, that terrorists did(or will) respect the laws they rallied together against, despite the fact that these laws never bound them then or now..in the first place.