Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, ...
If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Yes, this is important, yes, it's newsworthy. No, it's not "Hacker News". It's all over the news, and there's nothing specific about hacking, or start-ups. It's not even of "deep interest" in any real sense. It's tragedy, pure and simple, and then it becomes politics.
your quote just negated your argument. Read it carefully, it says: "MOST stories about..." Most is the important word here.
This shooting is unprecedented in the US as far as the number of children killed, and will mark a point in history. Considering I don't even watch the news or go to any news web sites, if I hadn't heard about it on HN, I probably wouldn't have even known about it to be honest.
I'd love to see some innovative thinking from HN, but this thread is mostly the same pro anti gun ravings; confusion about mental health and mental health treatment; etc.
It's intensely interesting, but mostly shallowly so.
I can't wait until the part where we all don't talk about gun control and carry on as usual. Sigh.
EDIT: I see my post is being downvoted. I know that it may come across as insensitive to immediately leap to the gun control debate, but frankly I'm more angry than upset by this news. How many times does it have to happen? We have a good 48 hours of emotional outpouring and then everyone forgets it ever happened.
I would really rather we talk about mental health and brain chemistry. Objects are easy to vilify, but we are ignoring mental health in this country and this is the result. The number of people walking around with untreated Schizophrenia is seriously problematic. The shooter in NM set off so many warnings that were ignored by people in power that it should have been seen. When the dust settles, I would expect a similar narrative on warning signs.
How many times are we going to find out someone had a history of mental issues and nothing was done? How many people are reluctant to take proper medication because they view the effects of the medication worse than what it trying to treat. We have a lot of people coming back with PTSD, we need to get better at this.
I remember OK and that was farm products (which some companies still sell at automated machines). IEDs, pipe bombs, propane canisters, Molotov cocktails are all capable of killing a lot people and are easier to build or acquire than guns.
This has nothing to do with gun control. Guns exist, that can't be stopped any more than preventing alcohol from existing (prohibition), and some bad guys will always have access to guns. Or knives, or diesel fuel, or explosives.
Was the Oklahoma-city bombing a wake-up call for "explosives control"? Was the 2009 Chengdu bus-fire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Chengdu_bus_fire) a wake-up call for diesel control? Was the Osaka school massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_school_massacre) a wake-up call for knife-control? Was the 2012 Toronto mall shooting a wake-up call for gun-control in Canada, which already has extremely stringent gun-laws?
It's all too easy to blame the gun in these situations, but guns are just tools, as are knives, and diesel fuel, and even explosives.
It's not the gun. It never was the gun. It's the person.
I say the same thing when people in oppressive regimes are silenced with no recourse because the government has no reason to fear it's own citizens. Sigh. I did not downvote your post, but frankly I'm angry that you just assume everyone who is pro-2nd amendment just isn't as enlightened as you are.
Gun control is the easy answer. I want to know how we as a society can figure out why people get frustrated, depressed, or angry to the point that shooting up a kindergarten enters into the picture.
We don't know the backstory here, but usually these events are all about someone whose life is spinning out of control for any of a dozen reasons, and either nobody has a clue that anything was wrong or everyone thought that the guy was a timebomb and did nothing.
Well, why don't we bring it back to technology then?
Everyday on HN there's this drone about the next Instagram or 37 Signals. Or who will produce better email or flamewars regarding the next dominant mobile OS. Time wasted, honestly (Oh yeah, 'I figured out project management, again.')
Where's the debate on HN on how best to handle gun control in the U.S. using technology? Can this community not produce answers for those questions?
What do you mean? That's usually the first thing people talk about when they hear about a shooting. There is always lots of talk. However, it's a divisive issue that many people feel strongly about and it's a constitutional issue.
The psychology behind the kind of people that could do a thing like this baffles me completely. Insanity doesn't begin to describe it. Parents should not have to worry about whether or not their children are safe in school. At the same time armed guards at school are not a solution either, then you might as well turn it into a mini prison.
What a sad sad day.
Even countries with gun control have instances like this (but they're arguably less frequent), and some countries with lots of guns have almost no problems like this at all (Switzerland for instance).
Just trying to imagine dropping a grade school kid off at school to find them dead in the afternoon from an insane thing like this I find that I can't do it, it is just too far from what I can still imagine. And I have a pretty rich imagination...
This world could be so nice, why does it have to be such a crappy place?
Can pro-gun people please stop using Switzerland as their go to argument? Do you know why they have so many guns? Because people who have done military service are required to keep a rifle locked up in their house. These are trained people who have gone through psychology tests and military training. That is very very fucking different than the situation in the US.
In my ever so humble opinion, it's a population issue.
When you have a population size of 300 million you're going to get a lot more outliers (crazy people) than if you have a population of 7 million. Statistically, you will also have crazier people.
One way to reduce the possibilities of a crime like this is to reduce the centralized system of public education.
My family home schools our children. It coincidentally helps solve this particular problem. (Perhaps it also reduces the likelihood that we spread viruses like the flu).
Making public education more distributed by the use of technology could certainly help with security.
Listen, there are two parts to this: 1. The horrible tragedy, and 2. The hopes to prevent this from happening again. If we are going to talk about this, we need to all fall under the assumption that we agree that this is both a very tragic act perpetrated by someone who is obviously disturbed/mentally ill, and that it is all of our desires to do what we can to make sure senseless acts of violence like this never happen again.
So where do we go from here? How do we prevent this from happening again? It seems that there are two schools of thought (generalizing obviously): 1. Disarm everyone, and 2. Allow everyone to carry weapons. Regardless of which side you fall in, neither work perfectly unless they are complete (i.e. all weapons are gone thus criminals don't even have access, or everyone is armed and no one has the upper hand). The problem with both absolutes, is a deranged person will always find a means to carry out their ill will, whether that's a gun/knife/driving a car into a crowd.
The safest computer is encased in concrete, and buried 6 feet underground. Much in the same way, the safest society would have each of us locked in a room, with no interaction. What we have to figure out is this: How much liberty do we all give up, to limit the devastation of the senseless acts of a few?
> 1. Disarm everyone, and 2. Allow everyone to carry weapons.
Nice strawmen. There are obviously options in the middle, namely, increasing traceability of weapons and ammo and shutting down channels that where weapons are allowed to change hands anonymously.
The proliferation of weapons is one thing, but the fact that these tragedies occur and we don't have a way to follow the chain back to the disreputable dealer who sold these armaments - and shut them down - is just non-sensical.
The 2nd amendment fundamentalists who don't even want question how these weapons can get in the wrong hands - often use that same strawman you pose above - which is rediculous - many folks support the 2nd amendment yet find the need for further action to prevent these events from happening.
If you believe that the shooter in this case was disturbed or had mental illness (I've seen no reports to conclude this, btw) then the first thing you would demand is 1) better mental health care facilities and treatments for the public at large and 2) universal health care systems to provide the least possible friction in accessing those mental health care services.
Also, you don't have to be either for banning guns or having no regulations at all. Instead, a compromise of allowing regulated gun ownership would be better.
We don't need to prevent this from happening again. We need to stop these things from happening again and again and again.
It's shocking but it's not surprising, because it's almost a predictable event in the US today. Hardly a year goes by in the US without a shooting spree, at schools and otherwise.
Some data: In the US, there are about 3.45 homicides with firearms per 100,000 population per year. In Germany (where I live), this figure is 0.19, that is roughly factor 18.
It is utterly fascinating to me how much discussion there is around this, here on this forum and in other places. In no other country in the world would this even be a debate...
Of course you want to disarm everyone!
That is the only sensible option! There is absolutely no need why anyone, save members of the executive branch enforcing the government's monopoly on violence, would ever need to carry a firearm.
"Self defense" and "liberty" are totally crazy arguments, that are only ever brought up in America and are based purely on historical reasons.
The problem is that easy availability of guns amplify the destruction that can be perpetuated by mentally unstable individuals. A similar incident happened in China today where 22 kids were stabbed by one perpetrator but not one had life threatening injuries. What if Walmart China sold guns like the US one does? How many innocent kids would be dead today?
> How much liberty do we all give up, to limit the devastation of the senseless acts of a few?
Liberty? What about the liberty not to get randomly shot down and you or your loved ones' life taken away from you and the people who know you? Isn't the gift of life the supreme liberty taking precedence over the need of some to worship guns?
The ability to take away someone right and liberty to live at a moment's notice borders on a superpower and should be handed out very sparingly to those who absolutely need it to do their job.
This isn't hacker news. I'm going to see this depressing, heart wrenching news in a hundred other places... let me have my one safe technology news site :(
True, but it's a community whose opinion I trust more than most others, so it's often enlightening to read comments about non-hacker news posts once and a while.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Awful, tragic things happen every day. Some can be prevented and some can't. It's highly unlikely that this is saddest thing to have happened in the world today.
There are a certain percentage of people in the world who will kill people for no reason, molest children, order executions and market crystal meth to young mums. This has always been the way, and will always continue to be.
Now I'm not belittling it as a tragedy, but we have to accept that some terrible things just happen and cannot be prevented or deterred. They always have, and they will continue to do so.
Sometimes there is no lesson to be learned, and we have to accept that what we've seen is a manifestation of human nature, in the same way that lightning is a manifestation of nature itself. Neither are predictable, preventable and both will happen forever.
Am I the only one who finds it strange (or even slightly disturbing) that this is essentially an after the fact live-blog of the event? For those connected to this school, I can understand wanting information and not wanting to wait. For anyone else, it just seems like obsessive rubbernecking taken to the extreme.
This may seem tangential, but I swear it's not. We live in a country (US) where growth and progress is measured primarily in GDP. Poverty is measured economically. People's happiness is blithely assumed to be some kind of function of their economic well-being, especially because that can be measured.
There are alternative ideas like "Gross National Happiness" that attempt to measure what could arguably be called the end, as opposed the means (economic). This is generally presented as an alternative goal, to raise the "GNH" of a country. And it's certainly a valid one.
But what if, even more importantly, it's not the gross "national happiness", but rather its distribution?
The perpetrator in this horrible tragedy was clearly horribly unhappy, and almost certainly with severe mental problems. But this isn't a private concern, because in cases like this it becomes a national problem.
When are we going to stop concentrating so much on economic progress and GDP, and start considering how our society and institutions provide for people at the bottom rung of the "happiness" ladder? When are we going to move mental health from a "side issue" about "sick people" that "doesn't concern me", to a central national priority?
There's so much work to be done, and it's barely even a blip in the conversation.
First off, the school shooting is a complete tragedy, there's no two ways about it. It's sickening and frustrating and depressing. I can't imagine what something like this does to a person or how a person is drawn to do something like this.
However, our world isn't any different than it was. There's hope in everything. Crazy, murderous people have always existed and will always exist. Life has always had tragedies, even ones bigger than this. As humans, we're designed to look at the most recent thing and go "oh my god, this is the worst thing ever" in order to deal with problems - it's just how we're designed.
What I'm getting at is that the world will be here tomorrow, and it's not ending any time soon. There's plenty of hope in this world, we just lack the proper context sometimes:
1) Your children are more at risk dying in a car accident or eating crappy food than a school shooting.
2) You're more likely to die of a lightning strike than a terrorist attack.
3) If we couldn't have guns, he would have used a knife.
A father of one of the children's... how does our society produce individuals like this? I know there are probably dozens of answers...
edit: just to be clear, I am not a father of one of the children. I was told the shooter was a father of one of the children at the school. Not sure if that is correct.
It's depressing how we are becoming numb to mass shootings due to their frequency. It seems like a week can't go by without a tragedy like this occurring.
here is a way to combine technology and transparency to make it more difficult for someone to do this:
guns owned in America have mandatory geolocation installed. guns lock if geolocation is disabled or hacked, an alert is autosent to local people and authorities with the last known location, and law enforces speedy investigation of the guns whereabouts and reinstallation of the geolocator. i'd like an app that tells me where the nearest guns are to me and some info about who they belong to, i.e. police, citizen, military etc. if a gun is brought near public spaces, schools, theaters, etc., it should tweet, sms, or otherwise alert local police and anyone who would like to know. i'd like to also set my own alerts, such as alert me if a non-police gun is within a few hundred feet of my location, or my kid's location, etc. the constitution says there is a "right of the people to keep and bear arms," but does not use the word "right" to defend privacy.
While I don't want to diminish the magnitude of the tragedy described here, I'd like to remind everyone that there are many other causes of untimely death that, while mundane, are much more lethal. Take for instance car crashes, or most diseases.
If the goal is to fight untimely death, we should take a hard look at the cold numbers. One will find for instance that smoking scenes in films kill far more people than those shootings. [1]
No, it should not happen ever again. However, we should not forget about the other priorities.
[1]: Regular exposure to smoking scenes makes children and teenagers far more likely to smoke later on. Smoking makes you far more likely to have cancer and such. And having cancer most likely shorten your lifespan. Despite the 3 layers of indirection, the numbers are so massive that a single smoking scene in a blockbuster is probably more lethal than a fully loaded gun.
"In 2007, the U.S. had the highest gun ownership rate in the world - an average of 88 per 100 people. But the U.S. does not have the worst firearm murder rate - that prize belongs to Honduras, El Salvador and Jamaica. In fact, the U.S. is well down the list with a rate of 2.97 per 100,000 people. Below is a list of countries with available firearm data from 2007 starting with countries where firearms are most common."
Within a couple years this exact scenario will play out. A gunmen will talk in a crowded place loaded to the gills. Assault rifles, bullet proof vest, explosives hid around the building. He will pull out his gun and kill the poor unsuspecting first soul. After that initial shot someone with a concealed weapons permit is going to blow his brains out cutting his rampage short ( I truly hope the person who plays the hero is a little old lady packing heat in her purse).
[+] [-] ColinWright|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pg|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarmig|13 years ago|reply
Then again, your comment reminded me to flag it...
[+] [-] sixQuarks|13 years ago|reply
This shooting is unprecedented in the US as far as the number of children killed, and will mark a point in history. Considering I don't even watch the news or go to any news web sites, if I hadn't heard about it on HN, I probably wouldn't have even known about it to be honest.
[+] [-] DanBC|13 years ago|reply
I'd love to see some innovative thinking from HN, but this thread is mostly the same pro anti gun ravings; confusion about mental health and mental health treatment; etc.
It's intensely interesting, but mostly shallowly so.
[+] [-] Alaskan005|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] untog|13 years ago|reply
EDIT: I see my post is being downvoted. I know that it may come across as insensitive to immediately leap to the gun control debate, but frankly I'm more angry than upset by this news. How many times does it have to happen? We have a good 48 hours of emotional outpouring and then everyone forgets it ever happened.
[+] [-] protomyth|13 years ago|reply
How many times are we going to find out someone had a history of mental issues and nothing was done? How many people are reluctant to take proper medication because they view the effects of the medication worse than what it trying to treat. We have a lot of people coming back with PTSD, we need to get better at this.
I remember OK and that was farm products (which some companies still sell at automated machines). IEDs, pipe bombs, propane canisters, Molotov cocktails are all capable of killing a lot people and are easier to build or acquire than guns.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|13 years ago|reply
Was the Oklahoma-city bombing a wake-up call for "explosives control"? Was the 2009 Chengdu bus-fire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Chengdu_bus_fire) a wake-up call for diesel control? Was the Osaka school massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_school_massacre) a wake-up call for knife-control? Was the 2012 Toronto mall shooting a wake-up call for gun-control in Canada, which already has extremely stringent gun-laws?
It's all too easy to blame the gun in these situations, but guns are just tools, as are knives, and diesel fuel, and even explosives.
It's not the gun. It never was the gun. It's the person.
[+] [-] TallGuyShort|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|13 years ago|reply
We don't know the backstory here, but usually these events are all about someone whose life is spinning out of control for any of a dozen reasons, and either nobody has a clue that anything was wrong or everyone thought that the guy was a timebomb and did nothing.
[+] [-] balanceiskey15|13 years ago|reply
Everyday on HN there's this drone about the next Instagram or 37 Signals. Or who will produce better email or flamewars regarding the next dominant mobile OS. Time wasted, honestly (Oh yeah, 'I figured out project management, again.')
Where's the debate on HN on how best to handle gun control in the U.S. using technology? Can this community not produce answers for those questions?
[+] [-] dmm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyperbovine|13 years ago|reply
Second mass shooting of the week. "Guns don't kill people, ..."? Please.
[+] [-] watty|13 years ago|reply
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57559179/china-school-kn...
Guess we need to control sharp objects as well? It's easy to get angry at dangerous items but in reality it's the people we need to control.
[+] [-] trentlott|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|13 years ago|reply
What a sad sad day.
Even countries with gun control have instances like this (but they're arguably less frequent), and some countries with lots of guns have almost no problems like this at all (Switzerland for instance).
Just trying to imagine dropping a grade school kid off at school to find them dead in the afternoon from an insane thing like this I find that I can't do it, it is just too far from what I can still imagine. And I have a pretty rich imagination...
This world could be so nice, why does it have to be such a crappy place?
[+] [-] purplelobster|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pdeuchler|13 years ago|reply
When you have a population size of 300 million you're going to get a lot more outliers (crazy people) than if you have a population of 7 million. Statistically, you will also have crazier people.
[+] [-] chimeracoder|13 years ago|reply
Nice stuff happens. It just doesn't make (or sell) the news. But that doesn't mean the world isn't nice.
[+] [-] code4life|13 years ago|reply
My family home schools our children. It coincidentally helps solve this particular problem. (Perhaps it also reduces the likelihood that we spread viruses like the flu).
Making public education more distributed by the use of technology could certainly help with security.
[+] [-] JoeCortopassi|13 years ago|reply
So where do we go from here? How do we prevent this from happening again? It seems that there are two schools of thought (generalizing obviously): 1. Disarm everyone, and 2. Allow everyone to carry weapons. Regardless of which side you fall in, neither work perfectly unless they are complete (i.e. all weapons are gone thus criminals don't even have access, or everyone is armed and no one has the upper hand). The problem with both absolutes, is a deranged person will always find a means to carry out their ill will, whether that's a gun/knife/driving a car into a crowd.
The safest computer is encased in concrete, and buried 6 feet underground. Much in the same way, the safest society would have each of us locked in a room, with no interaction. What we have to figure out is this: How much liberty do we all give up, to limit the devastation of the senseless acts of a few?
[+] [-] r00fus|13 years ago|reply
Nice strawmen. There are obviously options in the middle, namely, increasing traceability of weapons and ammo and shutting down channels that where weapons are allowed to change hands anonymously.
The proliferation of weapons is one thing, but the fact that these tragedies occur and we don't have a way to follow the chain back to the disreputable dealer who sold these armaments - and shut them down - is just non-sensical.
The 2nd amendment fundamentalists who don't even want question how these weapons can get in the wrong hands - often use that same strawman you pose above - which is rediculous - many folks support the 2nd amendment yet find the need for further action to prevent these events from happening.
[+] [-] king_jester|13 years ago|reply
Also, you don't have to be either for banning guns or having no regulations at all. Instead, a compromise of allowing regulated gun ownership would be better.
[+] [-] abstractbill|13 years ago|reply
I think these are actually two extreme positions to which almost nobody seriously subscribes.
[+] [-] wlll|13 years ago|reply
Though that seems about as likely as "1.Disarm everyone".
[+] [-] jcromartie|13 years ago|reply
It's shocking but it's not surprising, because it's almost a predictable event in the US today. Hardly a year goes by in the US without a shooting spree, at schools and otherwise.
[+] [-] eik3_de|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schrototo|13 years ago|reply
Of course you want to disarm everyone!
That is the only sensible option! There is absolutely no need why anyone, save members of the executive branch enforcing the government's monopoly on violence, would ever need to carry a firearm.
"Self defense" and "liberty" are totally crazy arguments, that are only ever brought up in America and are based purely on historical reasons.
[+] [-] malkia|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] recoiledsnake|13 years ago|reply
> How much liberty do we all give up, to limit the devastation of the senseless acts of a few?
Liberty? What about the liberty not to get randomly shot down and you or your loved ones' life taken away from you and the people who know you? Isn't the gift of life the supreme liberty taking precedence over the need of some to worship guns?
The ability to take away someone right and liberty to live at a moment's notice borders on a superpower and should be handed out very sparingly to those who absolutely need it to do their job.
[+] [-] benkay|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] xauronx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marknutter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] driverdan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] malkia|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] btilly|13 years ago|reply
From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html we have:
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
That fits this story.
[+] [-] AlexMuir|13 years ago|reply
There are a certain percentage of people in the world who will kill people for no reason, molest children, order executions and market crystal meth to young mums. This has always been the way, and will always continue to be.
Now I'm not belittling it as a tragedy, but we have to accept that some terrible things just happen and cannot be prevented or deterred. They always have, and they will continue to do so.
Sometimes there is no lesson to be learned, and we have to accept that what we've seen is a manifestation of human nature, in the same way that lightning is a manifestation of nature itself. Neither are predictable, preventable and both will happen forever.
[+] [-] ryusage|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crazygringo|13 years ago|reply
There are alternative ideas like "Gross National Happiness" that attempt to measure what could arguably be called the end, as opposed the means (economic). This is generally presented as an alternative goal, to raise the "GNH" of a country. And it's certainly a valid one.
But what if, even more importantly, it's not the gross "national happiness", but rather its distribution?
The perpetrator in this horrible tragedy was clearly horribly unhappy, and almost certainly with severe mental problems. But this isn't a private concern, because in cases like this it becomes a national problem.
When are we going to stop concentrating so much on economic progress and GDP, and start considering how our society and institutions provide for people at the bottom rung of the "happiness" ladder? When are we going to move mental health from a "side issue" about "sick people" that "doesn't concern me", to a central national priority?
There's so much work to be done, and it's barely even a blip in the conversation.
[+] [-] KenCochrane|13 years ago|reply
This link reports 27 people dead, including 18 children:
http://www.pressherald.com/news/Gunman-killed-in-Conn-school...
so sad
[+] [-] jwwest|13 years ago|reply
However, our world isn't any different than it was. There's hope in everything. Crazy, murderous people have always existed and will always exist. Life has always had tragedies, even ones bigger than this. As humans, we're designed to look at the most recent thing and go "oh my god, this is the worst thing ever" in order to deal with problems - it's just how we're designed.
What I'm getting at is that the world will be here tomorrow, and it's not ending any time soon. There's plenty of hope in this world, we just lack the proper context sometimes:
1) Your children are more at risk dying in a car accident or eating crappy food than a school shooting.
2) You're more likely to die of a lightning strike than a terrorist attack.
3) If we couldn't have guns, he would have used a knife.
Be hopeful for the world.
[+] [-] washedup|13 years ago|reply
edit: just to be clear, I am not a father of one of the children. I was told the shooter was a father of one of the children at the school. Not sure if that is correct.
[+] [-] alexbell|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] jwco|13 years ago|reply
guns owned in America have mandatory geolocation installed. guns lock if geolocation is disabled or hacked, an alert is autosent to local people and authorities with the last known location, and law enforces speedy investigation of the guns whereabouts and reinstallation of the geolocator. i'd like an app that tells me where the nearest guns are to me and some info about who they belong to, i.e. police, citizen, military etc. if a gun is brought near public spaces, schools, theaters, etc., it should tweet, sms, or otherwise alert local police and anyone who would like to know. i'd like to also set my own alerts, such as alert me if a non-police gun is within a few hundred feet of my location, or my kid's location, etc. the constitution says there is a "right of the people to keep and bear arms," but does not use the word "right" to defend privacy.
[+] [-] loup-vaillant|13 years ago|reply
If the goal is to fight untimely death, we should take a hard look at the cold numbers. One will find for instance that smoking scenes in films kill far more people than those shootings. [1]
No, it should not happen ever again. However, we should not forget about the other priorities.
[1]: Regular exposure to smoking scenes makes children and teenagers far more likely to smoke later on. Smoking makes you far more likely to have cancer and such. And having cancer most likely shorten your lifespan. Despite the 3 layers of indirection, the numbers are so massive that a single smoking scene in a blockbuster is probably more lethal than a fully loaded gun.
[+] [-] pchivers|13 years ago|reply
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/07/28/guns-ownership-aroun...
"In 2007, the U.S. had the highest gun ownership rate in the world - an average of 88 per 100 people. But the U.S. does not have the worst firearm murder rate - that prize belongs to Honduras, El Salvador and Jamaica. In fact, the U.S. is well down the list with a rate of 2.97 per 100,000 people. Below is a list of countries with available firearm data from 2007 starting with countries where firearms are most common."
[+] [-] grkballer44|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kilimanjaro|13 years ago|reply
Drain your frustrations with those who destroy our future, not those who will build it.