If Adam Lanza only had a knife...

There's a lot of ignorance on display in this thread.....Not least about UK firearms laws (again).

The OP does have a point though.....If the loony behind all this horror had only possesed a knife he could have easily been overwhelmed, a gun changes all that.

Originally posted by Foxy1
You dont need guns to kill lots of people. The greatest weapon of mas destruction is imagination.
He could have killed just as many people by simply going to a gas station and buying gas can full of fuel and a cheap lighter. With enough planning like barring the doors from outside with a long hard stick or chains after retreating he could possibly killed every individual in the building.
Just food for thought...anything can become deadly weapon in the right hands. or should I say wrong hands...

Why it's almost like there'd be some sort of 'regulation' for 'buildings'. Maybe a 'building code' that specified alternate 'exits' to be used in 'fire'. I guess you would call those 'fire exits'.

People use firearms because they are by far the most efficient way of slaughtering people. It's as simple as that. Yes people can kill via many other methods, but we carefully regulate all of these. Why you can't have stricter regulation on these weapons is beyond me.

Originally posted by Grifter42
If he only had a knife, this whole thing would have been one or two casualties before he was over whelmed. This culture of gun worship and general "Make my day, punk" attitude ends up creating people and events like this. It is a self fulfilling prophecy. You people make yourselves look foolish. You do more harm than good, and you make the real, actual conspiracies look foolish in association.
Way to trivialize a tragedy. I hate yankees. I HATE yankees. Yet I'm not delusional and absolutely deranged enough to claim that the federal government would slaughter dozens of it's own yankees for reasons that only make sense to an incompetent bond villain. Grow some critical thinking skills. You people make me sick to my stomach.

Critical thinking skills? The guy was said to be a genius; I'm sure he could have thought of a better way to execute (no pun intended) his plan. My guess is that he would have used a car or home made bomb (like the unibomber did) before a knife.

I'll be honest, I'm surprised you didn't say a rock or paper airplane... A knife.... you've got to be freaking kidding me...

Originally posted by Grifter42
That's really black and white. It's a false dichotomy. You're saying it's a 50/50 coin type thing. Not true. In reality, you've got a cop with a gun, a criminal with a gun, a gun owner with a gun, a corrupt cop with a gun shooting minorities and planting drop weapons on them, you've got a crip with a gun, you've got one of the Los Zetas with a gun, you've got survival preppers with tons of guns, and you've got a psychotic kid who's stolen his parent's guns and uses them to massacre a school. It's not nearly black and white.

And with all that above guns are only involved in 7% of assault crimes..... With 6 million assault crimes yearly in America I'm thinking you might be focusing in the wrong area....

Originally posted by Grifter42
If he only had a knife, this whole thing would have been one or two casualties before he was over whelmed. This culture of gun worship and general "Make my day, punk" attitude ends up creating people and events like this. It is a self fulfilling prophecy. You people make yourselves look foolish. You do more harm than good, and you make the real, actual conspiracies look foolish in association.
Way to trivialize a tragedy. I hate yankees. I HATE yankees. Yet I'm not delusional and absolutely deranged enough to claim that the federal government would slaughter dozens of it's own yankees for reasons that only make sense to an incompetent bond villain. Grow some critical thinking skills. You people make me sick to my stomach.

Would you like to see an example of critical thinking skills?

Timothy McVeigh did not use a gun.

He killed 168 people.

19 of which were children under the age of 6

He injured 680 more people

Today you can still buy fertilizer, racing fuel and you can still rent box trucks.

Moral of this story? Murders will still murder with or without a gun.

Get the point yet Sparky?

Originally posted by MrWendal
Today you can still buy fertilizer, racing fuel and you can still rent box trucks.

Guess which of those you've mentioned is heavily monitored, has large purchases tracked, and has been successfully used to stop several bomb plots in the last 20 years.

Moral of this story? Murders will still murder with or without a gun.

Get the point yet Sparky?

The point is that you don't really want to know about the protections and regulations in place, you just want to insist that guns will somehow keep you safe from being shot to death.

Fun fact, you have a higher chance of being shot to death by a police officer than I have of being shot in any way shape or form. In fact it's so bad the US doesn't even publish the statistics of how many shootings there are per year as far as I know.

reply to post by exponent


and I am sure you have a higher statistical chance of being stabbed than I do.

Does it really matter which way you die?

Fact is, I can make pipe bombs, load them with nails, and still kill a large number of people. A person with the intent to kill can still do so with or without a gun.

Originally posted by MrWendal
reply to post by exponent

 

and I am sure you have a higher statistical chance of being stabbed than I do.

Nope, the US has more stabbing murders per capita than we have murders. You also stab a much higher number of people non-fatally.

Does it really matter which way you die?

It matters whether or not I die. Allowing easy access to guns allows easier killing. That's the problem.

Fact is, I can make pipe bombs, load them with nails, and still kill a large number of people. A person with the intent to kill can still do so with or without a gun.

edit on 22-12-2012 by MrWendal because: (no reason given)

So when you suffer a psychological problem and snap and grab the nearest weapon at hand will it be a pipebomb? No, it'll be a gun or a knife or a bat. I'll take the knife or a bat over a gun.

Nobody's saying ban guns = stop all crime. It's not an argument anyone is making. The argument that is being made is that if you reduce the number of firearms you reduce the availability of them, which reduces spree killings such as this. The UK is an excellent example of just how few firearms incidents it's possible to have.

More police are killed with firearms in the US than all firearm murders and police shootings put together in the UK.

The difference is frankly absurd.

Originally posted by Ameilia
reply to post by Grifter42

 

Hrm. Let's see, the exact same day Adam Lanza went to a school and killed 26 people with a gun, someone else in China went into a school too. He killed 22 people. With a knife.

The Daily Beast

A person with a knife is a threat to multiple targets. A person with a knife is a threat to you at a distance of 40 feet.

you are absolutly wrong..no fatalities in the china attack

If he only had a knife, this whole thing would have been one or two casualties before he was over whelmed.

In your opinion (whom) is going to be this "overwhelming"?

The fearless elementary school teachers? The female principal? A group of brave seven year olds?

A little help here...I'm trying to picture the scene in my head...

A twenty-something elementary school teacher lunges for the throat and eyes of the assailant....
school teacher dies....the principal grabs a mop handle...gets in a few defense blows and then
quickly dies as the assailant ducks and thrusts....an angry hell-bent mob of kids
rush forward and start kicking and scratching....and subsequently dying...one by one...

Sorry mate....I just don't see it.

At best some children escape and run away, maybe many of them, due to the time and effort it takes to
stab vs pull a trigger....but I just cannot envision a scene where this man is "subdued."

Here's a realistic scene that works,,,,

Assailant enters room and starts shooting...elementary school teacher has no weapon, and dies...
teacher's aide in adjacent classroom does have the gun... a .38 in a shoulder-holster....she uses it
....assailant dies

That's like saying if only the teachers could carry guns, he could have been stopped. We don't know what would have happened.

Originally posted by Ameilia
reply to post by Grifter42

 

Hrm. Let's see, the exact same day Adam Lanza went to a school and killed 26 people with a gun, someone else in China went into a school too. He killed 22 people. With a knife.

[

See, thar's what the gun freaks do. They lie. The children in China were NOT killed. They were injured. Only 7 required hospital treatment.See, www.dailymail.co.uk...

www.youtube.com...=3m36s

Originally posted by Grifter42
If he only had a knife, this whole thing would have been one or two casualties before he was over whelmed.

and if the teacher had a gun, there would have been 0 casualties. (besides lanza)

Should we ban bulldozers as well? Stop blaming the tools.

Man, Killdozer hurt no-one. He was against the establishment, and on a righteous mission. Adam Lanza was just a psycho.

Originally posted by F4guy

Originally posted by Ameilia
reply to post by Grifter42

 

Hrm. Let's see, the exact same day Adam Lanza went to a school and killed 26 people with a gun, someone else in China went into a school too. He killed 22 people. With a knife.

[

See, thar's what the gun freaks do. They lie. The children in China were NOT killed. They were injured. Only 7 required hospital treatment.See, www.dailymail.co.uk...

Let's see what's wrong here.

1.) You assume I'm a gun freak. You know what people say about assumptions...
2.) You start with the insults and name calling.
3.) You fail to realize this has been corrected, and I apologized on the first page.

That's what people like me do. They stand up for whatever the truth is, regardless of who was wrong, even if it was them.

If you actually paid attention to all of what I said, you'd see that I was complaining about the implication if we banned guns there would be no murders, or less murders, the condescending tone of the OP (kinda like yours), and I also apologized for linking and stating the wrong information, instead of going back and editing my post like lots of people here do.

For your information, it was initially reported all those people DID die, and I failed to go back (as I should have) and read the new 'information' that has been provided by our long suffering media, now showing that they did not in fact all die. So it was honest mistake on my part, which was corrected with a minute of Domo politely informing me of that. (Thanks Domo)

"Those who live in glass houses."

Best of luck to you mate.