[News] Several killed in Connecticut Elementary School Shooting

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Zappit

Staff member
Something has to be done to discourage these mass shooters. Make it illegal to release their names in the media. Bury their worthless carcasses in unmarked graves. Do anything it takes to prevent them from getting any sort of recognition.

And for God's sake, pay the fuck attention to the people in your life. There are always some warning signs.

It's time to extend the background check on gun purchases. Shut down those legal loopholes that allow quick and easy access, like gun shows or online sales. Make any person looking to buy a gun take a fucking course, so the instructors can look for warning signs.

We're fucking this up again and again and again. Now we have a room full of dead toddlers. Fuck the NRA. Fuck the bullshit argument that the founding fathers set up the Second Ammendment to include and all firearms. Fuck the people saying arm teachers. I don't want to carry. I don't want to live in constant fear of an accidental discharge.

This isn't reactionary. We've been here time and again. Pass some God DAMN laws. Make the assault weapons ban permanent. Cut down the number of bullets cartridges can hold. If some fucker skirts the law and somebody gets killed by a gun they sold, they should be charged as an accomplice to murder. It's murder if you participate in a crime where a person is killed even if you didn't do it personally. Why should this be any different?

If politicians had the balls to do any of this, despite the NRA's bitching about any sort of gun control, I'd vote for them. That person would be worth something as a human being.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
That post exemplifies why you can't have a gun control debate immediately after a shooting. Emotion trumps everything, and rationality is impossible.
 
Lets be honest, no time is the right time for gun control talks. There will always be reasons to not talk seriously about the subject.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Lets be honest, no time is the right time for gun control talks. There will always be reasons to not talk seriously about the subject.
The history of this very forum indicates otherwise very strongly. "Day of" is perhaps a skosh quick.
 
I disagree. This forum has no power to affect any real change. What we debate (and I use that term very loosely) on a daily basis doesn't have any power.

And "It's too quick" is just as much an appeal to emotion as "Think about the children". Only difference is the point it is supporting.


As for talking to you about it? Nah.
 
Gabby Giffords, the mosque in Milwaukee, etc. It's not like this shit isn't happening a lot. The reason people naturally turn to the gun control debate when there is gun violence is because it is fresh on their minds.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
I disagree. This forum has no power to affect any real change. What we debate (and I use that term very loosely) on a daily basis doesn't have any power.
... but that's the scope of the discussion. I'm not talking about the rest of the world, I'm talking about how zappit is completely incapable of reason right now. He will brook nothing other than complete submission to his frothing, righteous rage.

And "It's too quick" is just as much an appeal to emotion as "Think about the children". Only difference is the point it is supporting.
No, "it's too soon" is not to spare anyone's feelings, it is because it is impossible to have a civil, rational discussion about this while the bodies are still being cleaned up.

As for talking to you about it? Nah.
You always do. And then you stop, and then you come back. You're my own personal little forum battered wife.
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Gabby Giffords, the mosque in Milwaukee, etc. It's not like this shit isn't happening a lot. The reason people naturally turn to the gun control debate when there is gun violence is because it is fresh on their minds.
And eventually, after both that AND aurora, we did have discussions about gun control, remember?[DOUBLEPOST=1355529383][/DOUBLEPOST]
Nah, not anymore. You've made it obvious you don't want to play nice.
"I'll believe it when I believe it." - Yogi Berra
 

Zappit

Staff member
That post exemplifies why you can't have a gun control debate immediately after a shooting. Emotion trumps everything, and rationality is impossible.
So many are willingly blind to the horrors of these mass murders, claiming there's too much emotion involved. It's been months since Aurora. Over a year since Virginia Tech. It's been years since Columbine. Think time has changed my mind that the suggestions I made seem so necessary? I've believed this for years and years. Every time this happens it just gets worse and worse. Is a roomful of dead kindergartners not enough to get those "Don't be so hasty." folks to wake up to the reality of the world, that these things are happening and we're not doing enough - hell, we're not doing ANYTHING - to prevent these massacres? There are people practically putting out their eyes to remain blind.

This needs to be the absolute last straw. These kids were babies, innocent babies, gunned down by yet another nut who got his hands on firearms.

Time to open your eyes.

I'm frothing? Frothing? I've worked with students at every grade level. I've gone through training for what happened in Connecticut. I've seen those same young innocent faces, the same kind if faces ripped from this world today.

No, I'm not frothing, Gas. I'm sick of it. Sick this can not only happen, but keeps happening, and always wary it will happen in my school.

And I'm sick of people like you, people who make it so much harder to safeguard these innocent lives. Who seek to put off the conversation on this topic indefinitely, while more massacres take place.

Frothing? Incapable of reason? Fuck you, Gas, you self-righteous prick.
 

Zappit

Staff member
And my case is made, ladies and gentlemen. Have a good weekend, see you monday.
No real retort? No rebuff of my perfectly reasonable ideas that won't infringe on Second Ammendment rights? Did you just prove my point about people who would rather never have the debate?

Or is it just getting too hard to be so smug when we're talking about twenty dead five year olds?
 
notice how 22 schoolchildren were hurt in that story instead of killed?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
It's crazy how those guns were used to take over the planes huh?

Ban all guns huh? Kind of like ban all illegal drugs?
Your war on guns would be as effective and smart as the war on drugs. In fact, all the slayings/murders that have been stopped by personal carrying weapons would sky rocket because the criminals would have no less access to the weapons than they do now.

Oh and for the record, the Conneticut killer didn't even legally own the gun he used to kill the school children with either.

Comments?
 
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/09/mass-shootings-investigation

There is no evidence indicating that arming Americans further will help prevent mass shootings or reduce the carnage, says Dr. Stephen Hargarten, a leading expert on emergency medicine and gun violence at the Medical College of Wisconsin. To the contrary, there appears to be a relationship between the proliferation of firearms and a rise in mass shootings: By our count, there have been two per year on average since 1982. Yet 24 of the 61 cases we examined have occurred since 2006. This year alone there have already been six mass shootings—and a record number of casualties, with 110 people injured and killed.

Armed civilians attempting to intervene are actually more likely to increase the bloodshed, says Hargarten, "given that civilian shooters are less likely to hit their targets than police in these circumstances." A chaotic scene in August at the Empire State Building put this starkly into perspective when New York City police officers confronting a gunman wounded nine innocent bystanders.
 
I repeat:

Your war on guns would be as effective as the war on drugs currently going on in America and accomplish just as much.

Banning all guns would not get the result you're looking for. People who wanted to do mass killings/murders/homicides would still get the illegal weaponry and commit the same atrocities they do now. Your solution doesn't work anymore than the current government's solution on drugs.

The really funny part is if there was a ban on guns instead of drugs, you'd probably jump on the bandwagon of how it's unconstitutional and is being used by the political jail system to keep minorities in their prisons to keep the numbers up so they could make more revenue. :rolleyes:
 
I'm with GB, the emotions are too high on this specific shooting to talk about gun control, or anything else really, rationally at this point. Have fun with the circlejerk, I'll check back with this thread on Monday. If that makes me a self-righteous prick, because I'd rather mourn the deaths of 20 children and 6 adults than go around and around and around over the same topic again and again for the next two days, then I'll quite happily be that prick.

Peace.
 
It hasn't even been 24 hours since the shootings. Let's focus this energy on sending our prayers to the families who had to go through this horrendous ideal for now. The gun control issue and argument can be discussed another time. Even in its own, separate thread.
 
This is all I will really say on the subject-


This is a horrific thing to happen. I feel for the families and can not imagine this horrific event affecting someone I love.
 

Zappit

Staff member
Gilg is right about a total ban on guns being a catastrophic failure. But there are things that can be done reduce the damage guns are capable of:

-Reduce the number of bullets a magazine an hold. Make this a standard in manufacturing. A mass shooter can't fire off as many shots, and having to change magazines at least gives people a chance to get away or tackle the bastard.

-Prevent sales to those with documented mental health issues such as schizophrenia. That's not discriminatory. People suffering from such conditions can pose a risk to themselves and others if they are not being helped, more so than people who do not have such conditions.

-Add a day or two to the waiting period to buy a gun and require more thorough background checks. Close legal loopholes that allow gun shows and online sales to skirt existing waiting period laws.

-Hold unscrupulous sellers responsible for putting deadly weapons in the hands of dangerous people. I know you can't see the future, but I'm talking about people who would seek to circumvent the law to sell. If a person can be convicted for murder if an accomplice kills a victim during a crime, then why should a gun seller who ignored laws and sold a murder weapon to a killer get off scot-free? Make criminal sellers responsible for the crimes their weapons are used in, lock them up, and you've created a deterrent, or at least shut down the ones who do it often.

-Make the assault weapon ban permanent. It makes no sense for a civilian to have a weapon capable of spitting out so many bullets in such a short time. You have every right to defend yourself, but you don't need a machine gun to do it.

-is it so wrong to encourage prospective gun owners to take a course on responsible ownership? We don't let people just start driving without teaching them first, and cars can be mighty dangerous in up untrained hands, too.

Adding more guns to the equation will only compound the problem. That's more to lose, to get stolen, to wind up in the wrong hands. Others have argued that if the teachers and administrators were armed themselves, they could have put that animal down before he did so much damage. Really? How will people react after the first accidental discharge in a classroom? - God forbid it doesn't hit anybody. A teacher's first priority is protecting his/her students and getting them away from danger, not getting into a firefight with a madman. Plus, this man targeted a specific person - his mother - and then turned on the children. What mother would expect that? How can a dead teacher, armed or not, shoot and kill a gunman? Wouldn't preventing this guy from getting the guns do more?
 
I am sorry, and of course you all are right. I sometimes forget that Charlie Don't Surf only posts these kinds of threads so he can get his soap box to stand on, instead of really caring about the people involved. I should have waited until the gun control thread (that he won't create because his own ideals will be used against him) and left this thread as a memorandum to those lost in this and the other school tragedies.
 
I got off the forum after my last post, and told my wife how I was impressed that this thread hadn't devolved into stupid shit like it usually does when tragedies happen.

Boy did I speak too fucking soon.
 

Zappit

Staff member
I got off the forum after my last post, and told my wife how I was impressed that this thread hadn't devolved into stupid shit like it usually does when tragedies happen.

Boy did I speak too fucking soon.
I'm sorry for the part I played in that, but this one one stung me really, really deeply.
 
-Make the assault weapon ban permanent. It makes no sense for a civilian to have a weapon capable of spitting out so many bullets in such a short time. You have every right to defend yourself, but you don't need a machine gun to do it.
Fully automatic firearms (machine guns) have been illegal in the states since the 1930's. What is an assault weapon?
 

Zappit

Staff member
Fully automatic firearms (machine guns) have been illegal in the states since the 1930's. What is an assault weapon?
I meant assault rifles. The ban on them expired a while back, and there hasn't been a serious discussion on renewing it.
 
What are Assault Rifles then? The original ban on them was based mostly on looks, not actual capabilities. Like the .223 used in today's murders, it's a fairly low-powered rifle, but because it had a folding stock it was considered an assault weapon.
 
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