Mass Shootings, Guns, and the US

Here is a Reuters Article running down the worst mass shootings in the past 25 years.

You'll notice that 11 of the 16 incidents did NOT occur in the United States. And these are only the GUN incidents. I'll try to find some more info for generalized mass murders that may have used gas, or poison, or explosives. The Russian incident comes to mind right off hand.

Anyhow, in light of the Colorado shooting last night, the issue of guns and violence in the US is obviously at the forefront, so it is important to not get tunnel vision and over-react to this specific incident, but to look at the total picture.

Also, in my personal opinion, this is a Societal Issue with people expecting the government to provide TOTAL PROTECTION from all evils. This will never happen, and I wouldn't ever want it to happen. People expect the government to protect us from each other, from natural predators, from disease, from poor diets, and even from accidents! Requiring helmets, and warning labels on things like Roach Poison that says "Do not ingest." Really, do people need to be warned to not eat Roach Poison?

In addition to expecting the government to mandate and provide these protections, we have also become a society of VICTIMS! We see something going down, and we WAIT for someone else to put a stop to it? We have GROUP THINK, and we expect that someone else in the room must be in charge, it must be a gag, it must be different than what we are observing, someone else must have more information, so we just wait for our turn to be killed. Sure, sometimes people run, or hide, but that just makes you a better victim. Where are the FIGHTERS? The Columbine Massacre was eventually stopped by some students rushing the attacker. The professor at the Virginia Tech massacre saved many students by standing up to the attacker, even giving his own life in the process.

At a BATMAN premiere, it is more apparent than ever that we are all looking for a HERO. It makes me sad. I have batman in my Avatar, not because I hope a Batman will come save us, but because I hope if I'm ever in this type of situation, I will have the courage and commitment to ACT COURAGEOUSLY, and not die like a helpless victim.

I think that this is something we need to look at closely, since people bash the USA so hard on these events.

What do people say when an event happens in their country and guns were not allowed?

I agree with you, especially with what you say about people actually EXPECTING to be mollycoddled. It's very worrying.

Just googling "massacres over the last 20 years" there are a LOT of terribly sad stories, and they are definitely not all guns, and they definitely occur in areas with strict gun control.

It was 20 years ago today, December 6, 1989 that Marc Lépine walked into École Polytechnique in Montreal with one intent - to kill women. That day he succeeded in killing the 14 women named above and today we remember them

Source

Political kidnapping and massacre of 58 for opposing Mayor in the Phillipines.

New Zealand mass shooting

I think there are more of these things than I care to read. It is a very disturbing subject.

Originally posted by getreadyalready
Just googling "massacres over the last 20 years" there are a LOT of terribly sad stories, and they are definitely not all guns, and they definitely occur in areas with strict gun control.

It was 20 years ago today, December 6, 1989 that Marc Lépine walked into École Polytechnique in Montreal with one intent - to kill women. That day he succeeded in killing the 14 women named above and today we remember them

Source

Political kidnapping and massacre of 58 for opposing Mayor in the Phillipines.

New Zealand mass shooting

I think there are more of these things than I care to read. It is a very disturbing subject.

I really worry about you guys in the states. The amount of guns knocking about and how crazy people are getting nowadays could be a bad combo. That being said I would NEVER advocate disarmament.

Here is the text from the OP's original source and the breakdown by country.

Hmmmm how many of those other countries are guns illegal to have and carry in?

And these are just incidents that have gone on record.

(Reuters) - Here is a timeline of some of the worst shooting incidents carried out by one or two gunmen around the world in the last 25 years:

March 13, 1996 - BRITAIN - Gunman Thomas Hamilton burst into a primary school in the Scottish town of Dunblane and shot dead 16 children and their teacher before killing himself.

April 28, 1996 - AUSTRALIA - Martin Bryant unleashed modern Australia's worst mass murder when he shot dead 35 people at the Port Arthur tourist site in the southern state of Tasmania.

April 1999 - UNITED STATES - Two heavily-armed teenagers went on a rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Denver, shooting 13 students and staff before taking their own lives.

July 1999 - UNITED STATES - A gunman killed nine people at two brokerages in Atlanta, after apparently killing his wife and two children. He committed suicide five hours later.

June 2001 - NEPAL - Eight members of the Nepalese Royal family were killed in a palace massacre by Crown Prince Dipendra who later turned a gun on himself and died few days later. His youngest brother also died later raising the death toll to 10.

April 26, 2002 - GERMANY - In Erfurt, eastern Germany, 19-year-old Robert Steinhauser opened fire after saying he was not going to take a math test. He killed 12 teachers, a secretary, two pupils and a policeman at the Gutenberg Gymnasium, before killing himself.

October 2002 - UNITED STATES - John Muhammad and Lee Malvo killed 10 people in sniper-style shooting deaths that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area.

April 16, 2007 - USA - Virginia Tech, a university in Blacksburg, Virginia, became the site of the deadliest rampage in U.S. history when a gunman killed 32 people and himself.

November 7, 2007 - FINLAND - Pekka-Eric Auvinen killed six fellow students, the school nurse, the principal and himself with a handgun at the Jokela High School near Helsinki.

September 23, 2008 - FINLAND - Student Matti Saari opened fire in a vocational school in Kauhajoki in northwest Finland, killing nine other students and one male staff member before killing himself.

March 11, 2009 - GERMANY - A 17-year-old gunman dressed in combat gear killed nine students and three teachers at a school near Stuttgart. He also killed one other person at a nearby clinic. He was later killed in a shoot-out with police. Two additional passers-by were killed and two policemen seriously injured, bringing the death toll to 16 including the gunman.

June 2, 2010 - BRITAIN - Gunman Derrick Bird opened fire on people in towns across the rural county of Cumbria. Twelve people were killed and 11 injured. Bird also killed himself.

April 9, 2011 - NETHERLANDS - Tristan van der Vlis opened fire in the Ridderhof mall in Alphen aan den Rijn, south of Amsterdam, killing six before turning the gun on himself.

July 22, 2011 - NORWAY - Police seize a gunman who killed 69 people at a youth summer camp of Norway's ruling political party, on the small, holiday island of Utoeya. Anders Behring Breivik is later charged with the killings, as well as with an earlier bombing in Oslo which killed eight people. The trial ended last month with Breivik saying that his bombing and shooting rampage was necessary to defend the country - prompting a walk-out by relatives of his victims.

December 13, 2011 - BELGIUM - Gunman Nordine Armani killed three people, including a 17-month-old toddler, wounding 121 in a central square in the eastern city of Liege, before shooting himself. The next day Belgian investigators found the body of a woman in warehouse used by the gunman raising the death toll, including the killer, to five.

July 20, 2012 - UNITED STATES - A masked gunman killed 14 people and wounded 50 others when he opened fire on moviegoers at a showing of new Batman film "The Dark Knight Rises" in the city of Denver.

Originally posted by TechUnique

Originally posted by getreadyalready
Just googling "massacres over the last 20 years" there are a LOT of terribly sad stories, and they are definitely not all guns, and they definitely occur in areas with strict gun control.

It was 20 years ago today, December 6, 1989 that Marc Lépine walked into École Polytechnique in Montreal with one intent - to kill women. That day he succeeded in killing the 14 women named above and today we remember them

Source

Political kidnapping and massacre of 58 for opposing Mayor in the Phillipines.

New Zealand mass shooting

I think there are more of these things than I care to read. It is a very disturbing subject.

I really worry about you guys in the states. The amount of guns knocking about and how crazy people are getting nowadays could be a bad combo. That being said I would NEVER advocate disarmament.

All the more reason for the law abiding citizen to be armed.

reply to post by TechUnique


I think the economy is much more dangerous than the amount of guns.

If we just assumed every person was armed, then how much more polite would society be?

I do worry about us though, because our population has become helpless. We can't survive without McDonalds and Walmart, but the economy is unsustainable, and it will inevitably come crashing down. When it does, there will be a lot of helpess people.

Also, at the same time, a lot of the armed people will be the people that have prepared in other ways, and we will end up defending our preparations with our arms, and it will make us look very bad in the eyes of many. That is a scary dichotomy. Screwed if you do, and screwed if you don't. Do you prep and defend, only to look like an evil hoarder, or do you become a victim like the rest?

I feel that the whole video gaming craze has at least a tiny bit to do with all this. The value of a life has been diminished. I hate to sound like an old person ranting about how things were in my day, but damn, in my childhood, these things just didn't happen. Guns were still just as popular, but War was not an everyday occurring thing, and the most violence you dealt with was on cartoons. (come to think of it, The Road runner stuff was a bit violent)

Kids fought with fists and nobody had to die over stupid stuff. I guess I am just getting old.

reply to post by network dude


Kids were allowed to fight with fists. That is a big difference. Bullies found out that not all kids can be pushed around, and also that not all things won by force are rewarding. Victims of bullies learned coping mechanisms like humor, or intelligence, or they learned that losing a fight is often better than running away from one.

I think coddling the children has made them more susceptible to escalate the violence. Instead of risking getting a bloody lip, they just run and get a weapon.

My brother also pointed out that the cartoons back in the day used to have violence, but they rarely had a simple conclusion at the end. There were no happy endings in the Road Runner or Daffy Duck. They kept trying and trying and trying, and failing all the time, but they never gave up. Today's cartoons always reach a happy conclusion in 11 to 30 minutes. There is no perseverance, there is just simple solutions. Kids expect simple solutions, instead of life-long struggles.

reply to post by network dude

I'm the absolute last one to think video games or TV violence should stand as any EXCUSE,,,,,We all make our choices in life and influence isn't cause. Nowhere remotely close.

Having said that..and I feel I have to say that first, I agree with you. Personally, I've wondered as an adult who plays first person shooters and have since Doom came out (The very first one... lol), if the gaming today isn't an influence on desensitizing people. One evening that hit me as I looked at my stats on one of the games I'd been playing all evening and noticed the video kills I'd gotten specifically by "Headshot" were in the many hundreds....how does that effect people growing up on that now with the graphics almost at real life level?

No excuse..but yeah. I think it's fair to wonder how much influence.

I'll flag this but its sort of hitting the bullseye on the wrong target.

The LARGEST MASS-MURDERS did not happen by individuals. They happened by states which had disarmed their citizens in the name of peace and then murdered them.

Not 10

Not 20

Not 50

MILLIONS. They murdered millions. The Americans murdered American Indians. The British murdered all across the globe. The Russians murdered their own people. The Chinese murdered their own people. The Japanese murdered Chinese. The Germans murdered their own people (and everyone elses). On an on. When the government can order armed agents to murder without fear - that is MASS murder. It doesn't matter if the 'government' fears the people, it matters if their agents fear the people.

I'm glad that some ATF/DHS/FBI maoist is sitting in their cubicle right now shaking in their boots at the thought of coming in to the heartland and trying to disarm us so that they can murder us later on when we disagree with them.

reply to post by ararisq


I completely agree. I almost included that stuff, but there are already 100 different ways to go in this discussion, so I tried to keep it simple. BUT, I agree that the massacres of millions are the result of exactly what is developing in the world right now. We are developing our populace to be helpless victims, and then all it takes is a Mao or a Hitler or a Milosevic to take advantage of that helplessness.

The first thing I thought when I read about this is; isn't Colorado a pretty liberal concealed carry state? Where were the people carrying when this happened? Why didn't even one patron in that theater have a gun?

One person carrying could have stopped this situation in its tracks. Its a shame more people don't exercise their right to self defense.

Originally posted by FortAnthem


The first thing I thought when I read about this is; isn't Colorado a pretty liberal concealed carry state? Where were the people carrying when this happened? Why didn't even one patron in that theater have a gun?

One person carrying could have stopped this situation in its tracks. Its a shame more people don't exercise their right to self defense.

The guy was suited up in body armor and had tear gas. Trying to take him on with a handgun would not have been a good idea.

reply to post by antonia


I disagree. You might not have won, might have even been killed, but how many would have escaped and survived while you distracted him?

He was wearing body armor and a gas mask, so he wasn't very mobile, and didn't have a good view of his surroundings. He could have been out-flanked and tackled, or even if he was shot and it didn't kill him, it would still have couased pain and disorientation, and caused him to go looking for the shooter instead of killing innocent people.

It would have been better to at least try. I would have tried. I haven't gone to a movie, or a fair, or any public gathering without my gun in many years. This just reminds me why.

Originally posted by getreadyalready
reply to post by antonia

 

I disagree. You might not have won, might have even been killed, but how many would have escaped and survived while you distracted him?

Unless you can conceal a shotgun in your pants you are wasting your time. You could have jumped on him to cause a distraction too.

Originally posted by getreadyalready
reply to post by TechUnique

 

I think the economy is much more dangerous than the amount of guns.

If we just assumed every person was armed, then how much more polite would society be?

I do worry about us though, because our population has become helpless. We can't survive without McDonalds and Walmart, but the economy is unsustainable, and it will inevitably come crashing down. When it does, there will be a lot of helpess people.

Also, at the same time, a lot of the armed people will be the people that have prepared in other ways, and we will end up defending our preparations with our arms, and it will make us look very bad in the eyes of many. That is a scary dichotomy. Screwed if you do, and screwed if you don't. Do you prep and defend, only to look like an evil hoarder, or do you become a victim like the rest?

Its only going to get worse brother, the USA and the World is in a death spiral that only a total collapes of the system can fix. The way the economy is going, i fear it will happen soon.

reply to post by antonia


Yes, exactly. I would have shot him, and if I didn't have a gun, or if the gun didn't work, then I would have jumped on him and attempted to take the shotgun. I'm not batman, but if I was close enough, I would have at least tried.

Also, it said he had on a gas mask, so his face was vulnerable, and my regular carry gun has a laser sight. In a dark theatre, a little red dot on someone's face is easy to see. He could have been taken down.

If he injured 50 people, then there was plenty of time for someone to do something, and maybe some tried? We don't have all the story yet. Perhaps some people did try him and failed? I think, we should all agree from now on, that we all rush a shooter! Any shooter. Maybe 3 or 4 of us get shot, but not 50. If all the men and capable women in any group just rush the shooter, they will be quickly neutralized.

reply to post by getreadyalready

I hesitate to carry any guns in public,I much prefer a knife.I could have killed him if he moved incorrectly but crazy makes him unpredictable.I must again ask the question what kind of drugs was he on on? Prozac
street? He had just dropped from med training in a school so I'm betting he was on something, We have to stop big pharma from selling these instant maniac pills now.