Ram Posted April 16, 2007 Share Posted April 16, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? oops... i felt a little knot in my stomach as i made my way across campus today.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CC1981 Posted April 16, 2007 Author Share Posted April 16, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? It is NOT easy to obtain as I explained in my previous post. I disagree. In the context of this thread (ie, univ. students going nuts), its pretty easy to steal some really bad/poisonous stuff. Go and rent it at the range and return it when done. Does not work that way man- there are ranges which owns guns that you can rent to use. But those guns are so poorly maintained and are in such bad condition that its not funny. Seriously, it doesnt make sense to fret over the tools these psychos are using rather than whats causing this shit. Oh and the cocaine example is not really relevant you know. The reason i said gun-control is a futile idea has been explained by Anakin. This is not about gun-regulation or availability, this is about society's tilt. If you take away guns, crime will actually skyrocket. Why ? because illegal guns are very easy to get anywhere in the world. There are always the crooked military/policeman who will sell you a few guns and almost every city these days have tons of guns if you add up the gun-count of the policemen. Its not like every city and village has a huge stash of cocaine or heroin lying around. But this easy access to guns and corruption in society means that regardless of how stringent gun-control is, criminally oriented will have little or no difficulty in procuring guns if they wanted to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mandrake Posted April 16, 2007 Share Posted April 16, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? Shocking....I hope the law makers wake up and do something abt the gun laws so that such loss of innocent lives never happens again...I dread how the families would be coping with such an inhumane tragedy.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yoda Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? No matter how anyone twists it, gun laws are to blame for these tragedies. When you make something like a gun so easy to get, obviously it is going to be easily available to anyone who wants it, legally or illegally. And all these BS about self-defense is all baloney. There have many many more acts of violence with these guns than acts of self-defense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apocalypse Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? anyone here from blacksburg? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kumble_rocks Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? No matter how anyone twists it, gun laws are to blame for these tragedies. When you make something like a gun so easy to get, obviously it is going to be easily available to anyone who wants it, legally or illegally. And all these BS about self-defense is all baloney. There have many many more acts of violence with these guns than acts of self-defense. Then How do you explain the stats presented by Predz ? :shrug: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Outsider Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? No matter how anyone twists it, gun laws are to blame for these tragedies. When you make something like a gun so easy to get, obviously it is going to be easily available to anyone who wants it, legally or illegally. And all these BS about self-defense is all baloney. There have many many more acts of violence with these guns than acts of self-defense. Then How do you explain the stats presented by Predz ? :shrug: Easily. I'll do that later tonight or tomorrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaurav Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? Knee jerk politicians and their gun control mantra :wall: Video games and loose gun control laws do NOT cause these incidents. Some one mentioned safety in India :lmao: Dude you got any idea how dangerous India is? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anakin Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? Predz, need to see some data and from a different source, as stats can be modeled anyway one wants to, most of them are just claims. Anyways, they are comparing gun murders with accidents while the point they are missing is most of those gun murders might have been avoided if the guns were not so available. You probably can't live without cars or food or pools, but surely you can get by just fine without the guns. Yes accidental deaths are fewer now, but those wouldn't take place in the first place if guns were not there for those accidents. And IIRC the gun people were against the safety features initially which would cost few more cents per gun, talk about irony. I agree with the point already made before, many crimes, specially the ones of passion and heat of the moment could've been avoided if guns were not so available. By the time you go get some guns chances are common sense would prevail or you might calm down somehow. And from what I've heard this one just might have been one from a broken heart. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaurav Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? Any news on the attacker? BBC quoted a witness- She said: "He was, I would say, about a little bit under six feet tall, young looking, Asian, dressed sort of strangely, almost like a boy scout, very short-sleeved light, tan shirt and some sort of ammo vest with black over it." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vroomfondel Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? I heard this from someone -- if only everyone were armed, then this wouldn't have happened. also, people could express their road-rage with bullets instead of the flip-off. we could one day aspire to be iraq, or afghanistan, or nwfp or somesuch. -- gun control does not mean 'no guns'. They should reinstate brady, which was an inspired law that required 5 days of background checking before purchasing a gun. 5 days is a long time to sweat for someone who is buying guns just to go people hunting. I am against "no guns" because it would work just as badly as "no drugs" or the patriot act. I am for better gun control, licensing etc. case in point, virginia is a C- on the brady scale-> * no background checks on private gun sales * no concealed weapon law (i think) also, iirc 6-7 states in the country have NO age restrictions on guns, minors can purchase guns, but not alcohol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gaurav Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? 5 days of background checking before purchasing a gun. 5 days is a long time to sweat for someone who is buying guns just to go people hunting. See here lies the problem. That person won't be held back by any gun law! He will just buy it from the black market :eew: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yoda Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? Any news on the attacker? BBC quoted a witness- She said: "He was, I would say, about a little bit under six feet tall, young looking, Asian, dressed sort of strangely, almost like a boy scout, very short-sleeved light, tan shirt and some sort of ammo vest with black over it." The Chicago Sun-Times reported Monday night that authorities are investigating whether the gunman was a 24-year-old Chinese man who arrived in the U.S. last year on a student visa issued in Shanghai. Police believe three bomb threats on the campus last week may have been attempts by the man to test the campus' security response, the newspaper reported. "It seemed so strange," Sheehan said. The gunman "peeked in twice, earlier in the lesson, like he was looking for someone, somebody, before he started shooting. But then we all heard something like drilling in the walls, and someone thought they sounded like bullets. That's when we blockaded the door to stop anyone from coming in." She said the gunman "was just a normal-looking kid, Asian, but he had on a Boy Scout-type outfit. He wore a tan button-up vest, and this black vest, maybe it was for ammo or something." http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266463,00.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sandtest Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? That's why I never went to Amreeka :hic: Kaliyug hai ghor kaliyug hai Bhaiya, India bhi kuch khaas nahin hai - ever bothered reading through your daily HT, TOI, or Express ? Some of the most horrific crimes are mentioned in small paragraphs in the corner of the pages; which just goes out to show you the magnitude of criminal activity in IND. Women getting pulled off the street into cars with tinted glass and being r@ped inside while driven...that kind of sh*t would never happen here, even in the darkest neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Hell, in New Delhi i'd never let my grandmother go anywhere by herself and she usually doesn't. Again, not the case in NY Predator bhai, I fully agree with you.......it's a shocking incident indeed.. Had it happened here in India, we have treated this news as just another day in life....since we have endured so many crimes and violences....perhaps that's one of the several reasons why Westerners define our region as 'third world'..... But still, I guess this is time for American lawmakers for intro-inspection. btw...there is also an Indian professor among dead.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CC1981 Posted April 17, 2007 Author Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? By the way, i must add that when it comes to gun-control, i am speaking from a Canadian perspective - where you MUST posess a firearms license to buy a gun, many kinds of guns are illegal ( automatics and small concealable Bond-style revolvers), you are not allowed to carry a gun in public, you are not allowed to carry a concealed weapon, you MUST lock your weapons at all times when outside the range,criminal background check before issuing a license etc etc. But no further control (as in guns are totally illegal) is what i like. But having said that, the only reason i think gun-control is gonna make diddly squat difference is because guns are widely available in any society- whether it is legal or not. Ie, cops and military carry guns and there are ALWAYS crooked cops that will sell guns in the black market in every country. This is why the underworld in ANY country is armed to the teeth, regardless of how lax or tight the gun rules in that country are. So the point is, if you wanted a gun and you had the money for it (bear in mind- guns are NOT cheap, nomatter where so extra financing is not an issue), you will get it. Even if its Saudi Arabia or Russia or Commie China. Tighter gun control or total outlawing of guns even would only mean that this guy would've had to shell out a bit more money for his gun and it'd take him a few weeks longer to get a gun. Neither is an issue for a murderous suicidal maniac really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anakin Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? Well you can't really stop the murderous suicidal maniacs, they'll always find a way if they are serious. It's mostly about stopping someone just full of rage and he/she could do some damage with readily available firearms and accidental deaths. GKD, you're right about the black market, but unless people were really serious and planning a cold-blooded murder, people most likely wouldn't go to the hassle of getting a firearm spending more money and with bigger risks than a packet of pot. BTW, when comparing crimes in europe and usa, remember the # of population. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kumble_rocks Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? By the way, i must add that when it comes to gun-control, i am speaking from a Canadian perspective - where you MUST posess a firearms license to buy a gun, many kinds of guns are illegal ( automatics and small concealable Bond-style revolvers), you are not allowed to carry a gun in public, you are not allowed to carry a concealed weapon, you MUST lock your weapons at all times when outside the range,criminal background check before issuing a license etc etc. But no further control (as in guns are totally illegal) is what i like. But having said that, the only reason i think gun-control is gonna make diddly squat difference is because guns are widely available in any society- whether it is legal or not. Ie, cops and military carry guns and there are ALWAYS crooked cops that will sell guns in the black market in every country. This is why the underworld in ANY country is armed to the teeth, regardless of how lax or tight the gun rules in that country are. So the point is, if you wanted a gun and you had the money for it (bear in mind- guns are NOT cheap, nomatter where so extra financing is not an issue), you will get it. Even if its Saudi Arabia or Russia or Commie China. Tighter gun control or total outlawing of guns even would only mean that this guy would've had to shell out a bit more money for his gun and it'd take him a few weeks longer to get a gun. Neither is an issue for a murderous suicidal maniac really. I see your point. But tell me one thing , how many middle class youth in india can buy gun so easily. None of the folks I know back in India own a gun or have accessibility to avenues which will enable them to own guns. Speaking from purely American perspective , the situation has been bastardized by both the political parties. You have democrats on one hand , for "No guns" and you have the republicans along with their NRA cabal for "No gun control". The market is so commercialized now that , I can pretty much buy guns from any gun show instantly. Their is no background check and their are ways to easily circumvent these checks. Like the poster pointed out earlier , in Virgina even a minor can buy a gun. Even the guns are sold with no mandatory security latch. I think we need some balance here. Ironically , the democrats fail to answer to the fact that the inner cities have more crimes and it usually involves guns and a particular demographic who happen to vote for them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Outsider Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? http://www.gunowners.org/sk0703.htm 2. Fact: Gun control has done nothing to keep crime rates from rising in many of the nations that have imposed severe firearms restrictions. * Australia: Readers of the USA Today newspaper discovered in 2002 that, "Since Australia's 1996 laws banning most guns and making it a crime to use a gun defensively, armed robberies rose by 51%, unarmed robberies by 37%, assaults by 24% and kidnappings by 43%. While murders fell by 3%, manslaughter rose by 16%."2 What were the corresponding percentage increase in the 10 year period before this. Just quoting some numbers without perspective is meaningless. * Canada: After enacting stringent gun control laws in 1991 and 1995, Canada has not made its citizens any safer. "The contrast between the criminal violence rates in the United States and in Canada is dramatic," says Canadian criminologist Gary Mauser in 2003. "Over the past decade, the rate of violent crime in Canada has increased while in the United States the violent crime rate has plummeted." 3 Again, no benchmarks for these statistics. Was Canada's violence rate on the rise anyway? What about different social structures in Canada and USA? * England: According to the BBC News, handgun crime in the United Kingdom rose by 40% in the two years after it passed its draconian gun ban in 1997.4 Again, where is the benchmark prior to 1997 and what are figures post 1999? Just plucking random years and random percentages makes no sense. 6. Fact: The United States has experienced far fewer TOTAL MURDERS than Europe does over the last 70 years. In trying to claim that gun-free Europe is more peaceful than America, gun control advocates routinely ignore the overwhelming number of murders that have been committed in Europe. * Over the last 70 years, Europe has averaged about 400,000 murders per year, when one includes the murders committed by governments against mostly unarmed people.17 That murder rate is about 16 times higher than the murder rate in the U.S.18 Europe? How can anyone in their right minds compare countries like Slovakia, Serbia etc. to US? Why not try make an apple to apple kind of comparison by comparing Western Europe to US? Scandanavian countries, with the strictest gun laws in the world have close to ZERO gun crime rate. Why not compare those countries with the US which are more similar in social structure to US than someplace like Romania or Bulgaria? http://www.gunowners.org/sk0702.htm 1. Fact: Twice as many children are killed playing football in school than are murdered by guns. That's right. Despite what media coverage might seem to indicate, there are more deaths related to high school football than guns. In a recent three year period, twice as many football players died from hits to the head, heat stroke, etc. (45), as compared with students who were murdered by firearms (22) during that same time period.1 So? What have children dying playing football got to do with gun control? Whats the point of this statistics? Just because more people might be dying playing football, its alright for half that number to die because of guns? And look at those numbers. Small number statistics with huge error bars. After yesterday's incident the numbers would read 45 for football and 55 for guns, all in one shot. Do quoting such random numbers make any sense? 2. Fact: More children will die in a car, drown in a pool, or choke on food than they will by firearms. As seen by the chart on the previous page, children are at a 2,000 percent greater risk from the car in their driveway, than they are by the gun in their parents' closet. Children are almost 7 times more likely to drown than to be shot, and they are 130 percent more likely to die from choking on their dinner.2 Same as above. Just because children drown, how does it justify more dying by guns? 3. Fact: Accidental gun deaths among children have declined by over 50 % in 25 years, even though the population (and the gun stock) has continued to increase.3 What about non accidental deaths? Reduction in accidental deaths can be a result of more secure guns, parents getting more aware etc., what about deliberate killings? 4. Fact: Despite the low number of gun accidents among children, most of these fatalities are not truly "accidents." According to Dr. Gary Kleck, many such accidents are misnamed -- those "accidents" actually resulting from either suicides or extreme cases of child abuse.4 Dr. Kleck also notes that, "Accidental shooters were significantly more likely to have been arrested, arrested for a violent act, arrested in connection with alcohol, involved in highway crashes, given traffic citations, and to have had their driver's license suspended or revoked."5 WOW!!! Because a child is being abused, these guys are justifying him killing himself!!! Because, some children have a violent streak, lets also hand them guns!!!! Just brilliant!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Outsider Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? I disagree. In the context of this thread (ie, univ. students going nuts), its pretty easy to steal some really bad/poisonous stuff. No its not. I have already told you it requires approval from your research advisor to get such stuff. It might be different in your university but thats how things are in US university and we are discussing US here. Does not work that way man- there are ranges which owns guns that you can rent to use. But those guns are so poorly maintained and are in such bad condition that its not funny. Seriously, it doesnt make sense to fret over the tools these psychos are using rather than whats causing this ****. If most people will be renting from the ranges, the standard of the guns as well as the prices will automatically become competetive. Simple supply and demand economics. If you take away guns, crime will actually skyrocket. Like in Scandanavian countries, for example? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Outsider Posted April 17, 2007 Share Posted April 17, 2007 Re: WTF just happened ? If you're an idiot who wants to break into a house in New Hampshire, Florida, Maine, Texas etc, it's obvious that the occupant will have the chance to defend themselves with deadly force. Compare this to New York (gun control has done f*ck all here, i know for a fact), Chicago etc. the occupants will in most cases be completely defenseless. How can you compare primarily suburban areas with urban hubs like NYC and Chicago when it comes to crime? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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