Shooting in Texas

[Mazza35]

Guys guys guys,

You have it ALL wrong, it's fucking Texas, obviously these two gentlemen were having a duel, now yes it's a modern style duel but obviously one insulted the others mother/intelligence/weight and or sexual orientation, so they were forced to duel with pistols, but unbeknown to them, the janitor foolish stood behind one of them and got hit as a result.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duel

CAPTCHA: Dueling Banjos, yes Captcha, I believe it was.

 

[Mr.BadExample]

obviously these two gentlemen were having a duel

Nope. Just
Suspected gunman in Lone Star College shooting: "Someone bumped me" [http://www.kvue.com/news/Suspected-gunman-in-Lone-Star-College-shooting-arrested-188342941.html]

"Records show Foster has a criminal history that includes charges of resisting arrest and possession of a prohibited weapon."

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Two people being shot counts as a mass shooting?

I would agree with this sentiment. Two people is a small enough number that there could be plenty of reasons beyond homicidal insanity to look for explanation.

Still, it does beg the question of how many is a mass shooting? Is there a number or is it all about the intent of the shooter. Kinda makes me think there should be a word or phrase beyond "mass shooting" to describe the phenomena.

 

[Xanex]

Two people being shot counts as a mass shooting?

This is Texas. If this happened in Chicago it wouldn't even be news worthy. And yes this is happening more due to media turning it into big media stories and making the shooters into a celeb of sorts.

 

[DanDeFool]

I agree entirely. Of course, I'd prefer we try something that actually has some chance of success rather than something that is doomed to failure from the get-go. Of course, civilization has been trying to stop this kind of shit for millennia (and have been way more successful than they get credit for, by the way), so I'd be happy to hear an alternative that isn't based on myopic, reactionary bullshit.

You mean gun control? So are you one of the people who writes off Australia's success as an anomaly?

I mean the US had an assault weapons ban for 5 years via Clinton and because of a lack of definitive evidence that it was effecting a solution, people use it as definitive proof that such measures wont work. Has no one considered the possibility that such measures need to be used long term, or that perhaps it wasn't strict enough, etcetera.

Before you call Australia's gun ban a "success" you should read [URL="http://www.snopes.com/crime/statistics/ausguns.asp" (title,target)]this[/URL]. Sounds more like "slight modification to the status-quo" than "success" to me. And if you believe [URL="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323777204578195470446855466.html" (title,target)] this guy[/URL], Britain's attempts at strict gun control laws have been an outright failure.

I also agree that gun control won't work unless you're strict enough. Unfortunately, I think being strict enough for this to work means declaring martial law, suspending our protection from unreasonable search-and-seizure, and ordering the military and municipal police forces to do a rigorous house-by-house, building-by-building search to make sure they get ALL the guns.

That depends upon how you qualify the word "success". If the intent of the new law was to prevent mass murder, then in both cases it has succeeded has it not? There have not been any mass shootings in either Australia or England from what I understand since both of those events.

In the case of England, I think the article you've quoted is misleading, as are most articles with some intent or argument (ie bias) behind them. If you look at the actual government numbers, you can see that gun violence was trending upwards for decades.

http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/sn01940.pdf

And while the new laws did see a spike in use of certain weapons, it has peaked in recent years and is on the decline to the point of 1998 levels. Though the 2012 year may not have followed that trend as the pdf doesn't list data from that year.

Either way. I think what's important in any such study is to look at the effects long term, not short term. People complain that some of these intended measures are reactionary, but then those same people point to short term statistics as proof of their failure. Point is, it's just as reactionary to abandon an approach after a few years as it is to create a new law based on one or two specific events.

Policy changes like this are intended as a long term solution, their effectiveness should be addressed in the long term not the short term. If Britain's statistics hold true and if gun crime continues to decline and if gun control is in fact behind that decline in part or in whole then that I think is more evidence towards the effectiveness of the measures rather than to their failure.

The problem with democracy as a whole is that most governments are only looking towards the next election and thus long term solutions rarely take hold because few people are looking long term, they're only looking as far as the next election. Further people want instant results and instant gratification but changing a culture and its acceptance or perception of guns is a long term process.


And yes, if someone is committed to killing people they can find other means to do so. But this defence quite frankly is shallow and irrelevant. Because neither knives nor bombs nor other means are as easy and simple and as effective to use as guns. Anyone can pick up a gun and kill another human being, the fact that small children regularly kill one another by accident with guns is proof of that.

One need only look to the frequency of their use to see the ease of how often they are used. Firearm murder outnumbers murder by knife by a ratio of more than 5:1 in the united states. http://projects.wsj.com/murderdata/#view=all . Firearm outnumebrs explosives by a ratio of 2000:1

All good points. I agree that the effects of legislation have to be considered long-term, but you also have to consider their effects broadly as well. I tend to agree that a broad ban on legal firearm ownership would likely decrease the type of mass murder we're currently discussing, but what effect would it have on other types of crime? This is why I think we would need to be aggressive about policing illegal weapons in addition to disarming the general public; if you don't simultaneously make a concerted effort to disarm violent criminals, solving the mass shooting problem could exacerbate other forms of violent crime , possibly leading to greater loss of life in the long run. I don't have any statistics on this, so take with as many grains of salt as you like. Still, something we should be thinking about.

Also, I think my point about alternative forms of violence holds more water in the context of a broad ban on firearms. Yes, at the moment, guns are an easy and readily available way of causing mass casualties. My point is that taking guns away doesn't resolve the root cause; you still have someone who wants to kill people. As long as you have a killer, they'll find a weapon. However, I do have to concede that other means of inflicting mass causalities are either much less effective (bladed weapons), or much more complicated (explosives) than firearms.

Ultimately, I would rather see this problem be resolved through increased awareness of the need to secure personal weapons and a focus on readily available care for the mentally ill. Repealing the second amendment seems like an excessive decision that punishes the many for the actions of the few.

Besides, for the public at large, we're all still far more likely to die in a car accident or from heart disease than from getting shot to death. Mass shootings create a lot of drama, but it's important to keep these risks in perspective. On the whole, preventing future mass shootings won't net the average American any more than an incremental gain in personal safety, at best. We should consider carefully how much we're willing to pay for a small improvement.