You are absolutely a firearm supporter. Do not try to tell us otherwise

Yeah going after mental health is great and all, except you usually hear things like "he was a nice quiet boy we never expected this". So after you clean up the blood from that assault rifle let's get to work and tackle why he snapped.

My gut reaction is to fail Hehe because, from my canadian perspective on firearms, it doesn't make any sense. However, I don't think he's totally insane from previous posts, so i'll try to reason his point out:

IF the situation in America became like Canada overnight in terms of gun distribution and regulation, I think he would be completely wrong.

However, with the types of laws (if any) the US will be able to introduce in the near future (10 years?), and the existing gun distribution, laws, and culture, I can see how he thinks that it won't make a huge impact by implementing some (probably weak) gun laws. I still don't agree, but it's definitely true that given where the US is at with guns... it's going to take a long long time for this to change. They're not going to turn into Canada or Aus. over night by implementing some laws.

It will take a generation or two to change, but if not now then when? Its so incredibly far overdue. Again, just because its late, and not going to be as effective as we'd like, apathy is the worst thing that can be done at this point.

You are free to have your opinion about me, but I'm not a firearm supporter and neither I'm an owner or with plan to own one in the future.

Growing up, I've had experience of gun violence in my family (uncle got hit by Chinese mafia guy due to some $$$ issue), so I've always had the stance that violence doesn't solve problems and I'm absolutely disgusted by it.

However, when discussing this specific issue, I think gun is not the problem. Regulated or not, tragedies like this would happen one way or another. Therefore, if we were to introduce any initiative to address the problem, I'd like concrete plans that really target it than just some political/social propaganda.


@MarkyMark:
Addressing mental health is not something that would have immediate effect. But if our (or American's for that matter) could take a serious view at it rather than filling their political agenda (supporter of gun control=votes), the result is worthwhile in the long run. Sadly, because such measurement doesn't translate into votes, there's little interest from politicians.

Mental health can be introduced into curriculum, but schools are too focused on actual subjects that it's often deemed unnecessary. If we actually introduce functional social engagements to our kids as well as the principal of social value (you don't need to agree, but at least understand to respect it), it would go a long way.

I just don't seem to understand why you think addressing mental health issues must be an independent solution for the violence. Doesn't addressing the accessibility of guns AND mental health issues make sense?

You actually think having someone wait 10 days for a gun is going to stop a guy who is willing to walk into a campus and shoot 10 people from getting one?

What exactly do you guys propose as these "new" laws to stop these people from getting their hands on guns? Because everything I've seen proposed isn't going to stop someone from getting a gun when there are 300 million of them in circulation

I think the act of being able to go into Walmart and buy a gun has very little to do with the overall gun crime in the USA.

Because gun is just a tool and its control is often used as political incentive rather than anything else. A kitchen knife can be deadly in the wrong hands with enough incentive. Therefore, it's more important to address that incentive; the real problem.

And it's too easy to lose focus on such initiative because gun control gets so much attention so easily. Therefore, it actually makes more sense to just address the problem rather than bringing something so political motivating issue along. By bringing that topic onto the scene, we'd spend more time discussing whether gun should be controlled or not, or how, than discussing how to prevent this kind of event as a whole.

If you just focus on one thing, mental health/social cohabitation, which doesn't bring a lot of discussion other than budget, it would make it easier and be more effective 10~20 years down the road.

All in all, it's all about effectiveness. When you concentrate on one thing, it's always more effective than two things at the time.

This is still a weak argument. We're talking about guns, the weapon of choice for mass killings. I'm sure if grenades were more readily available they'd get some love too. How many people are you going to knife before you're tackled to the ground? Why not make the most efficient tool for killing people harder to get?

No government policy is ever going to be the "one thing" they focus on. There are a lot of aspects to running a country.

Fuck it's so frustrating reading any of your posts HEHE.

YES mental health needs reform in the United States. BUT SO DO firearms! You act like why bother doing anything with guns. It's a multi-angled attack (pun intended) on mass violence in the states. Why won't you admit that a firearm has at least a bit of a pie Slice in the problem

Increased over short term or long term? What type of homicides increased? What places are you using as reference?

If you are saying that by regulating firearms we could potentially have less firearm-related incidents, including, but not specifically to this kind of mass shooting. Then that's whole other topic. And as statistics posted previously, either side can find support, so I can also say that what I'm suggesting is correct.

But our entire discussion has been about mass shooting all along. And to specifically address the issue of mass shooting, no... firearms regulations (except maybe a outright ban+confiscation of all firearms in circulation, but even that is debatable) would bring little if any effect at all.

If you are so convinced that by regulating firearms would help, good for you and we agree to disagree. However, even with a Canadian style regulation, we still have our share of shooting problems. What makes you think that would help the US?

I am repeating again, I'm not against or in favor of regulating firearms, but to say that regulating firearms is the cure to this mass shooting problem is a wishful thinking at best. And since we are actually discussing a solution to this problem, let's focus on where the attention is needed (mental health/social value) rather than arguing how effective gun control would be.

two second google search:
The Facts That Neither Side Wants To Admit About Gun Control

If this is what you have been arguing about, I have to say, you really fail at reading comprehension.

edit:

As in, please really do quote, an instance, at least in this thread, that anyone thinks regulating firearms is the cure to this mass shooting problem.

Its like Hehe is just reading and discussing a completely different topic at hand than everyone else has been discussing.

The place where we are having our disagreement is the gun control effectiveness on SPECIFICALLY mass shooting.

Many of you here think that gun control would reduce the likelihood of this kind of event taking place and/or the amount of victims because if they didn't have access to gun, not that many people would be killed/hurt.

I'm suggesting that if a guy has motive, with or without gun, he can kill that many with other type of tools (cars, knife, heck... you can find plenty of killer weapons in a Home Depot hardware section). Or he'd just comply with the regulation until he gets the gun and still commit the same crap. So gun control has little meaning. Instead, we should move to something else more meaningful and not fall into this BS discussion because gun control is such a popular topic.

If that's not what we were discussing, then I don't know what you guys have been getting from my posts either.

:facepalm:

i tend to agree with him loosely..

i guarantee you the majority of murders involving firearms in the USA are commited with guns not purchased legally.. hence what will enforcement at the store solve?

you think those THOUSANDS of murders in illinois etc are done with guns purchased at walmart? lol

if a guy who just wants to act tough and carry a 9 in his belt on the streets of chicago can get his hands on a gun, i'm pretty sure a guy willing to plot a mass murder will be able to as well.

If the guns did not come from Wallmart where did they come from?

See the thing is... you can only help those with mental problems who want to be helped.

These people that commit these acts.. don't seem like the type that would approach people for help. That's the unfortunate part.

Humans will only accept help, usually when they feel like they cannot do anything to better their situations.

Now due to the way their brains work... The next process isn't to "fix" themselves, its to "fix" the world.

By killing people.

No, No, No, No, No....

Can we agree that killing a specific person is an entirely different problem than mass killing/shooting?

If that was the case, who would in their right mind pick a knife to kill multiple people? A car? Really? Driving a car into a school to kill a classroom full of students?

From the article you posted earlier, I don't know where the author gets the idea that's what gun control is supposed to do.

edit:
You are correct, those who are looking to kill people (more than 1) aren't going to be deterred away just because of the lack of easy access to lethal weapons (ie. guns). But with stricter gun laws/control, mass murders will hopefully have to jump through more hoops in order to get guns. ULTIMATELY, the country needs to find out the root cause for these mass murders, but for the time being, some thing has to change.

You call that horribly biased pile of garbage a source?

I'm pretty sure we're disagreeing about non-mass shootings as well.

Hehe:

http://images.yuku.com.s3.amazonaws....8808828b10.gif

This is why people are having a really hard time conversing with you... seriously.. if the US had Canada's "share of [mass] shooting problems", I think that would be a 9285409385x improvement, and whichever president got them there would be hailed a hero, and rightfully so...