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Vancouver Off-Topic / Current EventsThe off-topic forum for Vancouver, funnies, non-auto centered discussions, WORK SAFE. While the rules are more relaxed here, there are still rules. Please refer to sticky thread in this forum.
I'd like to focus on this passage, but first I'll address that larger body of your text. I've not noted any especially anti-firearms posts within this thread, or ever within the greater context of revscene, only posts of by people with various degrees of experience with the subject and a lot of pointed criticisms of the American culture surrounding it. Even a proponent of CCW permits, would have to agree, a greater proportion of gun owners in America and not responsible compared with Canada. Moving along..
The SKS compared to the AK-47 - just my experience/knowledge which is not flawless by any means.
-the SKS was designed to be a rifle with semi-auto capability.
-the AK-47 was designed to be a machine gun with full or semi-auto capability.
-the SKS is designed to hold a fixed 10 round magazine.
-the AK-47 is designed to hold a removable 30-75 round magazine.
- the SKS is designed to be accurate and has tight tolerances.
- the AK-47 is designed to be reliable and has very wide tolerances.
- the SKS uses a two-piece piston.
- the AK-47 uses a one-piece piston.
- the SKS and AK-47 both use 7.62 x 39mm ammo.
Yes, yes, yes, as used by a legal gun owner, none of this really matters too much. Unfortunately, a person who has avoided the type of contact with police that would have them prohibited from obtaining a PAL or RPAL can legally purchase a gun with illegal intentions (like we see in America, time and time again). While the SKS is fundamentally a rifle, the AK-47 is fundamentally an assault weapon, and that's why it's the gun universally chosen by poor/cheap armies the world over. The SKS can be converted to full-auto and made to accept higher capacity magazines, but it won't stand up to that type of use well. The AK-47 was born and bred for full auto uses, so although they're not set up in that configuration for sale in Canada, if someone were to convert one, they would have a weapon that thrives under spray-and-pray conditions. So, when you get down to brass tax - there really is a big difference between the two guns in the wrong hands, not just aesthetic differences.
Edit:
Bonjour, I see you've written above, the SKS and AK-47 are equally accurate? I've never shot an AK, nor do I have any desire to, so I have no point of hands on comparison, but I've always understood the AK-47 to be fundamentally less accurate than the SKS?
I would agree that the AK has ergonomics and design for more of an assault capacity and the SKS is more of a long rifle, but at the end of the day, there are always mods you can do. If the government takes away one gun, a company will design mods to upgrade another gun to take its place.
A quick youtube search yielded an insane SKS Bullpup stock kit.
Nope, I said that the AK is not as accurate as others that shoot the same rounds. There's the SKS-D which takes AK mags that you can actually buy in Canada but those are rare to find these days - they are not full-auto though. The CZ 858, another popular 7.62x39 rifle in Canada, is a semi-auto version of the full-auto vz58. Not as popular as the AK but widely used as well. We can talk guns if you want, but I'm sure this is not the thread to do it. Most people don't care enough to understand in details to begin with.
Also, as you said, to legal gun owners in Canada, none of the difference you listed matters. See, this is where people get mixed up when talking about gun control - what exactly is being controlled? If you're trying to prevent criminals from getting access to certain guns, then targeting legal owners does nothing at all since, as you mentioned, criminals have their own channels of arms supply.
If we're trying to control or prevent the "crazies" from getting guns, then the issue is mental health and the abundance of (or lack of) a support system for those that need it. That is not to say that having some form of gun control has no value - it does. As I mentioned, we can do as much as we can do to screen out those potentially unstable people from having lethal weapons, but there will always be times where a determined individual will obtain the tool they need to inflict the maximum amount of damage, guns or not.
I haven't been keeping up with the news on this incident lately - have they figured out the shooter's motive behind all this mess?
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Last edited by Bonjour43MA; 12-17-2012 at 11:51 PM.
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video is dated but is still relevant. it explains how firearms are categorized, operate, and how appearance doesn't matter. video is from california which has similar gun control laws to canada
-shooter had mild aspergers (autism spectrum) sociopathic personality. no sense of sympathy toward people.
-Mom and Dad just recently divorced. Went through Depression and anger towards parents
-Mom is his primary caregiver after divorce so he depends on her emotionally for support and care.
-eventually Mom spends more time with her kids at school than son.Mom is an avid gun collector.
-Son goes in a jelous angry rage finds her guns.
-Kills Mom then Kids then himself
I've worked as a support worker with kids and adults with autism/aspergers and i can see how this all makes sense. This is a mental illness and these people should be monitored and treated 24/7.
You also mention magazine restrictions. First, you suggest an arbitrary number of 10 rounds should be the legal limit for American self defense. Have you been in an American self defense shooting? Have you consulted an expert in American self defense shootings who has studied cases? I can post many documented law enforcement and private citizen shootings where the attacker did not stop even after being shot 10 times.
Not that it's important, but I'm confused by your fixation on the number 10 even after you acknowledged that it was written arbitrarily.
Quote:
Magazine capacity restrictions are already in place in Canada and California. Guess what? It's done nothing to reduce violent crime in California, and I can give you a page here specifically about only Canadian school shootings where magazine restrictions did not help anyone. This is just Canada and doesn't even include all violent crimes, just schools.
You're doing it again -- what I mentioned in my other post in this thread. There is zero proof of causation between magazine restrictions and whatever you're referring to in that webpage you cited. Absolutely nil. I understand the incredible difficulty in attempting to prove such a thing; a tightly controlled experiment isn't at all feasible since we don't exactly have murderers and disposable lives in our arsenal. We thus rely on precise studies to supply empirical evidence, if it can even be construed as such.
Case in point. Thanks for quoting me and stating what you just said. A perfect example of what I was talking about where people believe that a certain type of gun is "deadlier" than the other.
The AK is popular because it is a simple design that is easy to clean and use, is cheap to make, and low maintenance. Yes, it IS identical to other rifles that shoot the same ammo (7.62x39mm) and perform the same function, but with obvious mechanical differences which resulted in the way it looks.
Like the Civic from years past, there's a shit load of them because of price points and what you get in return - it doesn't run faster than a Corolla; it doesn't take more passenger than a Sentra, and it doesn't do anything that any other 4 dr sedan can't do. You can think of the AK as the Civic in the firearms community.
Tell me, with facts, how the AK is "more deadly" than other rifles that shoot the same 7.62x39mm rounds? I got my pen and paper ready.
Higher cycling rate? Nope
Shoots bigger rounds? Nope
More accurate? Nope
Looks scarier because it's what the bad guys use in movies and video games? Ding Ding!
I didn't think it was necessary to, and thankfully Mindbomber has taken care of the comparisons for me.
When comparing guns, you don't simply go "well they can both put a bullet in you,so they are exactly equal"
That would be like comparing a Ferrari with a Toyota and going "well they can both drive, so will be the same around a race track"
You listed the many reasons why the AK is so ubiquitous with many militaries around the world. Easy to use, easy to clean, easy to 'spray and pray'. You listed many of the advantages that all make it deadlier than other guns.
Yes, they can both put a bullet in people, but when one is so much easier to kill someone with, it becomes "a deadlier gun". Simply put, it is easier to kill someone with a rifle like an AK than it would be with many other rifles.
The guy who killed all those kids had shot each kid "more than two times". Would he have been able to do that so easily with a bolt action rifle? Maybe, or maybe it would have taken longer and he would have been captured. Or maybe he would have only shot each person once, and there would be survivors, who knows.
If a gun is built with the sole purpose of attacking humans, it has no business being in the hands of civilians. Or at least not with ammo within the same vicinity.
I'm done with this thread. I've posted more substantiated evidence and dedicated more time to research in this thread than anyone else. Required reading for this thread should be the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban and a history of school shootings since then. I believe I've posted enough to the masses of Revscene to sway those who are debating the issue. There are always those who will not be swayed. It never bothers me to have conflicting opinions with others, but it does bother me when they feed off of a sole source and preach it like a choir. I have read and listened to opinions on all aspects of this issue and I've come to my own beliefs of what is the root of the problem.
I truly hope we have inspired young Revscene members to dive deeper into the issue than watching 5 minutes on the TV news.
I only believe one truth more and more as time passes:
Sheep will be sheep, wolves will be wolves, and sheepdogs will be sheepdogs.
RIP to all the victims in this tragic event.
My last article post in this thread:
Quote:
DECEMBER 16, 2012 4:00 P.M.
The Facts about Mass Shootings
It’s time to address mental health and gun-free zones.
A few things you won’t hear about from the saturation coverage of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre:
Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media.
In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.
The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.
Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.
Almost all of the public-policy discussion about Newtown has focused on a debate over the need for more gun control. In reality, gun control in a country that already has 200 million privately owned firearms is likely to do little to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals. We would be better off debating two taboo subjects — the laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness and the growing body of evidence that “gun-free” zones, which ban the carrying of firearms by law-abiding individuals, don’t work.
First, the mental-health issue. A lengthy study by Mother Jones magazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.” New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson have both suggested that the ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people should be loosened. “Will we address mental-health and educational-privacy laws, which instill fear of legal liability for reporting potentially violent mentally ill people to law enforcement?” asks Professor Jacobson. “I doubt it.”
Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff. “Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,” Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me earlier this year at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman-movie shooting. Indeed, there have been many instances — from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo. — where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.
Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.
I spoke with Lott after the Newtown shooting, and he confirmed that nothing has changed to alter his findings. He noted that the Aurora shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.
“Disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks,” Lott told me. “A couple hundred people were in the Cinemark Theater when the killer arrived. There is an extremely high probability that one or more of them would have had a legal concealed handgun with him if they had not been banned.”
Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”
There is no evidence that private holders of concealed-carry permits (which are either easy to obtain or not even required in more than 40 states) are any more irresponsible with firearms than the police. According to a 2005 to 2007 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Bowling Green State University, police nationwide were convicted of firearms violations at least at a 0.002 percent annual rate. That’s about the same rate as holders of carry permits in the states with “shall issue” laws.
Despite all of this evidence, the magical thinking behind gun-free zones is unlikely to be questioned in the wake of the Newtown killings. Having such zones gives people a false sense of security, and woe to the politician or business owner who now suggests that a “gun-free zone” revert back to what critics would characterize as “a wild, wild West” status. Indeed, shortly after the Cinemark attack in Colorado, the manager of the nearby Northfield Theaters changed its policy and began banning concealed handguns.
In all of the fevered commentary over the Newtown killings, you will hear little discussion of the fact that we may be making our families and neighbors less safe by expanding the places where guns aren’t allowed. But that is precisely what we may be doing. Both criminals and the criminally insane have shown time and time again that those laws are the least of the problems they face as they carry out their evil deeds.
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and yet you never answered
Quote:
Originally Posted by StylinRed
how do those instances of violence equate to magazine restrictions being ineffective?
if drawing arbitrary lines in the sand, to try and cut down gun violence, proves pointless then why not just cut guns out of the picture entirely? because getting your panties in a bunch is too great a call to curb/cut down mass murders?
or offer anything substantial at all in regards to why every other country with some semblance of gun control doesn't have anywhere remotely near the level of gun violence as the usa
you've just chosen to ignore and move on to your next repeated point of "guns for all!"....
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they could easily seize a great majority of the guns, it'll likely take years but still
you would only be left with those hardcore nuts who will try and hoard/hide their guns
and then they can begin offering money for guns, like they do in LA to try and dwindle down the remaining guns out there
etc etc
the only problem with that isn't the raving gun fanatic but rather the corporations like Walmart
the point is they could easily mitigate the issue but they refuse to
its just like the "war on drugs" it could easily be solved but the actual "war" employs a lot of people and the drugs also serve the govt. and govt. agencies need
I didn't think it was necessary to, and thankfully Mindbomber has taken care of the comparisons for me.
When comparing guns, you don't simply go "well they can both put a bullet in you,so they are exactly equal"
That would be like comparing a Ferrari with a Toyota and going "well they can both drive, so will be the same around a race track"
You listed the many reasons why the AK is so ubiquitous with many militaries around the world. Easy to use, easy to clean, easy to 'spray and pray'. You listed many of the advantages that all make it deadlier than other guns.
Yes, they can both put a bullet in people, but when one is so much easier to kill someone with, it becomes "a deadlier gun". Simply put, it is easier to kill someone with a rifle like an AK than it would be with many other rifles.
The guy who killed all those kids had shot each kid "more than two times". Would he have been able to do that so easily with a bolt action rifle? Maybe, or maybe it would have taken longer and he would have been captured. Or maybe he would have only shot each person once, and there would be survivors, who knows.
If a gun is built with the sole purpose of attacking humans, it has no business being in the hands of civilians. Or at least not with ammo within the same vicinity.
The AK74 and the AR-15 fire a very similar round, 5.45x39 vs 5.56x45
The AK47 and the M14 fire a very similar round, 7.62x39 vs 7.62x51
---
The 5.56x45 is deadlier than the 5.45x39
The 7.62x51 is deadlier than the 7.62x39
---
Both the AR-15 and the M14 are legal in Canada, the (semi auto) AK and all of it's variants are banned because of their looks, and only because of their looks.
The AK is no more capable than the M14 or AR-15 of killing many people in the wrong hands. Ease of cleaning is not an eligible cause for a ban, any firearm that has been taken apart to be cleaned is equally inoperable.
Ease of use does not contribute to a firearm's killing potential, the fraction of a second's difference between loading times and switching the safety to fire is not a valid reason for a ban of one particular rifle.
What you are looking for is the handling of the firearm, how easy it is to fire in rapid succession, and it is actually easier to control the recoil on an AR-15 than it is on an AK74. The M14 and the AK47 are approximately the same in terms of handling ability.
Last edited by Yodamaster; 12-18-2012 at 10:29 AM.
I'm not really feeling this. I would've rather have seen a darkened room, candles, the PICTURES of the victims and an unknown singer. This is about the victims, but it got turned into a celeb sing fest.
canada has fairly strict gun control on restricted firearms such as hand guns yet this just happend:
Quote:
A 29-year-old Kelowna man faces a more than a dozen weapons related charges after he was found to be in possession of a loaded gun at the Willow Park Pub last Saturday night.
Police say they were called to the pub about 6:45 p.m. after someone noticed the gun.
"When police arrived the man was found seated at the bar with a loaded .45 caliber pistol tucked in the back of his pants and a knife hanging from a chain around his neck," says Cst. Kris Clark.
"He was arrested without incident and the firearm and knife were seized. A second handgun was later seized from the man's residence."
Ryan Bradley Allin was also prohibited from possessing a firearm at the time of the incident.
Allin faces 13 charges, including:
Possessing a Weapon for a Dangerous Purpose X 2
Carrying a Concealed Weapon X 2
Unauthorized Possession of a Firearm X 2
Knowingly Possessing a Firearm Without a Licence X 2
Possessing a Restricted Firearm With Ammunition
Possessing a Weapon Obtained Through Offence X 2
Possessing a Firearm Contrary to Order X 2
how can gun control be the answer to keeping guns out of the hands of bad guys when this guy not only didn't have a gun licence to begin with, but was actually prohibited from owning guns, was carrying a stolen restricted hand gun to a local pub on a saturday afternoon and not a single fuck was given. and this is in kelowna where we get like 3 shootings a year. people dont roll with weapons here unlike vancouver and definitely unlike the USA. If it is that easy to roll with a hand gun when this guy should have absolutely no access to guns, how easy is it for someone who actually wants to hurt someone to get guns.
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how can you point to exceptions to the rule and act as if that's damning evidence that gun control doesn't work? of course there will be cases in which guns are illegally acquired especially when our next door neighbour has a free flow of them
our problem in Canada with illegally acquired guns isn't our lack of control over it within the country but rather our borders with the united states allowing a free flow of illegal weapons to be smuggled over
and that guy in your article was caught and is being prosecuted; that same article can be used as an example of how gun control works even against those who illegally acquire them...
I am saying that even with the amount of gun control we have in Canada, which many people give as an example of what the US should do, it is still ridiculously easy to obtain guns. It doesn't matter if it came over the border or where it came from, the bad guys still have the guns, and our gun control is not keeping the guns out of their hands. Gun control keeps guns out of the hands of good guys.
This guy was arrested and is being prosecuted because instead of walking in and shooting up the restaurant, he sat at the bar and had a drink. Almost like carrying the gun contrary to the law was a complete joke to him. Maybe if he was a little more unstable, or had another drink or 2, he may have done some damage before someone called the police, we don't know.
Im not saying gun laws are silly and dont work. I am saying they are not the final answer to these shootings. The US needs to take some steps towards making guns more restricted (however that may be), but that wont solve the underlying problem. There is something wrong with the PEOPLE. Good law abiding people without mental health problems don't shoot 30 kids.
I am pointing to 'an exception to the rule' because these mass murders ARE exceptions to the rule.
Then we have to ask ourselves: if gun access isn't the difference, then what is? If it's possible for people to acquire guns just as easily here than there, then why is our gun violence and public-space-shooting rate so much lower?
My knee-jerk reaction is gun laws, but if it is as you say then I'm wrong--so what's our answer?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by RRxtar
Gun control keeps guns out of the hands of good guys.
much of the mass killings or stories that spark the gun control argument in the states are from shooters who are the "good guys" they've legally acquired the guns, but they're crazy or they're irresponsible (the conceal carry holders who murder because they felt "threatened")
Then we have to ask ourselves: if gun access isn't the difference, then what is? If it's possible for people to acquire guns just as easily here than there, then why is our gun violence and public-space-shooting rate so much lower?
Population difference
35 million vs 310 million
Health care
You'd be surprised at how many companies in Canada actually offer free psychiatrist sessions, whereas in the USA mental health is still considered a relatively taboo subject that a lot of health care companies don't like to touch.
Second Ammendment
Hate to say, but the "right to bear arms" plays partially into it... If someone feels entitled to something that's "rightfully" theirs, they're gonna take it, even if they don't need to. That sort of attitude doesn't necessarily mean that they have the same sort of healthy respect for firearms that Canadians may have (not to say all Americans are gun-toting yahoo's and all Canadians are law-abiding, upstanding citizens... but the stereotype does exist for a reason)
people who go crazy aren't 'good guys', they are people who most likely have mental health issues that should have been addressed.
maybe that is the answer? better access to mental health help in canada? maybe our society simply cares about each other a little more that the thought of a mass killing doesn't cross our minds? everyone joke that canada is so polite after all.
i don't have the answer. but i don't think the easy answer is the right one either.
but making it a little harder to buy a gun if you're bat shit crazy wouldn't hurt either. what does it take, 3 days 'cool down period' to buy a gun in the states? in canada it takes a written and practical test, 28 days and a series of background checks, and quite often another 1-3 months on top of that.
people who go crazy aren't 'good guys', they are people who most likely have mental health issues that should have been addressed.
maybe that is the answer? better access to mental health help in canada? maybe our society simply cares about each other a little more that the thought of a mass killing doesn't cross our minds? everyone joke that canada is so polite after all.
i don't have the answer. but i don't think the easy answer is the right one either
Yeah, I can't really disagree with that. There is never any "easy answer" for these kinds of problems. Each and every problem faces its own complexity and even I am sometimes faced with the mentality that arming the populace is not always a bad thing. Which, for a guy of my upbringing, is quite the turnabout.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lomac
Population difference
35 million vs 310 million
Health care
You'd be surprised at how many companies in Canada actually offer free psychiatrist sessions, whereas in the USA mental health is still considered a relatively taboo subject that a lot of health care companies don't like to touch.
Second Ammendment
Hate to say, but the "right to bear arms" plays partially into it... If someone feels entitled to something that's "rightfully" theirs, they're gonna take it, even if they don't need to. That sort of attitude doesn't necessarily mean that they have the same sort of healthy respect for firearms that Canadians may have (not to say all Americans are gun-toting yahoo's and all Canadians are law-abiding, upstanding citizens... but the stereotype does exist for a reason)
So I have a question--a serious one, not a flippant one, hopefully. What's the difference between an American with a second-amendment entitlement mentality, and the dude who was busted at the bar? Because when i think about that guy, I think he's probably the same kind of guy who would get busted with a DUI or have his license suspended and drive anyways "'cause I just gotta drive, and they can't tell me I can't!". If that makes any sense.
I hope I'm not just needling and being a thorn in either of your sides, solutions and resolutions are hard to come by, it seems.
Nope, I said that the AK is not as accurate as others that shoot the same rounds. There's the SKS-D which takes AK mags that you can actually buy in Canada but those are rare to find these days - they are not full-auto though. The CZ 858, another popular 7.62x39 rifle in Canada, is a semi-auto version of the full-auto vz58. Not as popular as the AK but widely used as well. We can talk guns if you want, but I'm sure this is not the thread to do it. Most people don't care enough to understand in details to begin with.
Also, as you said, to legal gun owners in Canada, none of the difference you listed matters. See, this is where people get mixed up when talking about gun control - what exactly is being controlled? If you're trying to prevent criminals from getting access to certain guns, then targeting legal owners does nothing at all since, as you mentioned, criminals have their own channels of arms supply.
If we're trying to control or prevent the "crazies" from getting guns, then the issue is mental health and the abundance of (or lack of) a support system for those that need it. That is not to say that having some form of gun control has no value - it does. As I mentioned, we can do as much as we can do to screen out those potentially unstable people from having lethal weapons, but there will always be times where a determined individual will obtain the tool they need to inflict the maximum amount of damage, guns or not.
I haven't been keeping up with the news on this incident lately - have they figured out the shooter's motive behind all this mess?
Thanks for clarifying, my reading comprehension goes down after 12am.
I'm not well versed enough to engage in serious technical discussions on guns. I've gleamed some knowledge from my exposure to guns though, and that causes me to question the comparison of the SKS and AK-47 as primarily aesthetically different. The mechanical design of the AK-47 seems to present a fundamentally more significant risk than the SKS if it reaches a person with ill intent.
I see placing restrictions on legal gun owners as having a purpose for a specific reason. There is no secret, backdoor warehouse, selling new illegal guns manufactured in America, but criminals have possession of exactly that. There is only one explanation, guns are being purchased legally, and being passed onto the illegal supply chain. Legal guns turned illegal feed not only the underground supply chain in America, but Canada and to an extent Mexico as well. I see that as the truest effect of America's lax gun control laws. I don't think anything will ever completely prevent a determined criminal from obtaining an illegal gun, because they certainly could be smuggled in from other continents. A gun smuggled in from Russia would be much more expensive than one from within the continent though, and that would at least make it a more difficult for the average criminal to get a hold of.
In Canada - I think our gun laws are very reasonable and prudent, I might like slightly tighter controls on restricted weapons, but overall, I think they're effective and fair. America just undermines them. I'm biased though, as I have no desire to own anything other than a basic hunting rifle.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RRxtar
people who go crazy aren't 'good guys', they are people who most likely have mental health issues that should have been addressed.
maybe that is the answer? better access to mental health help in canada? maybe our society simply cares about each other a little more that the thought of a mass killing doesn't cross our minds? everyone joke that canada is so polite after all.
i don't have the answer. but i don't think the easy answer is the right one either.
but making it a little harder to buy a gun if you're bat shit crazy wouldn't hurt either. what does it take, 3 days 'cool down period' to buy a gun in the states? in canada it takes a written and practical test, 28 days and a series of background checks, and quite often another 1-3 months on top of that.
What is access to mental health support like in Canada? Can I not just walk into any hospital and be directed to the necessary care?
In BC, if you have MSP coverage, I believe you are entitled to indefinite access to a psychiatrist.
I'm sure America is much different, and there is more to the lack of a fundamental social safety net causing these incidents.
Last edited by MindBomber; 12-19-2012 at 12:20 AM.
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