Change of Philosophy

[Warfish]

Originally Posted by southparkcpa

The topic has become broad....

The topic has become.....just another pawn in the usual folks promoting their usual political agenda.

Some demand new gun laws when current laws aren't enforced and no law apart from a 100% ban would put in adent in gun ownership and gun availabillity for crime.

Some demand draconian limits on entertainment to stop the one in 300,000,000 it might influence to kill.

Some want less testing and less judgment of school teachers.....

Some want Universal Healthcare including Mental Healthcare to catch these kids before they act.

Some want a return to forced Mental Health confinement for the potentially dangerous and derranged, to imprison these kids before they can act.

Some want to say "white America" is racist for only caring now.

Some want to say owning M-16's on full auto should like, totally be legal and stuff, the Constitution man!

Same old story, something happens, and everyone is using it to push their usual agenda days after.

And as usual, once the attention dies down, there will be no agreement, no consesusus, and no change or improements made.

[Trades]

Originally Posted by Warfish

The topic has become.....just another pawn in the usual folks promoting their usual political agenda.

Some demand new gun laws when current laws aren't enforced and no law apart from a 100% ban would put in adent in gun ownership and gun availabillity for crime.

Some demand draconian limits on entertainment to stop the one in 300,000,000 it might influence to kill.

Some want less testing and less judgment of school teachers.....

Some want Universal Healthcare including Mental Healthcare to catch these kids before they act.

Some want a return to forced Mental Health confinement for the potentially dangerous and derranged, to imprison these kids before they can act.

Some want to say "white America" is racist for only caring now.

Some want to say owning M-16's on full auto should like, totally be legal and stuff, the Constitution man!

Same old story, something happens, and everyone is using it to push their usual agenda days after.

And as usual, once the attention dies down, there will be no agreement, no consesusus, and no change or improements made.

I even read someone arguing that Carbs are the problem. Logic went that Insulin resistance due to carb induced type 2 diabetes causes autism in infants and these kids suffering from CARB syndrome (seriously) is what causes them to not be able to cope with normal society.

When you subject someone with CARB syndrome to social isolation and teasing and then give them access to lethal weapons, you have created the perfect storm for a tragedy.

Until we address the effect of our toxic food on brain function and common mental disorders, we can expect to have many more similar tragic events in the future.

[Trades]

I thought this post by Ben Stein fit here:

God Help Us

By Ben Stein on 12.17.12 @ 6:10AM
A massacre that has turned the world upside down.
I learned about the massacre at Sandy Hook elementary school while we were setting up at Fox News to tape Cavuto on Business. The news was so horrible that we all felt as if we had lost our legs and could no longer stand. It was such horrible news that it simply turned the world upside down.




It still is that kind of news, and it’s incredibly depressing about the nature of humanity. And my wife and I pray all day for the souls of those dear children and for the peace, if there ever will be peace, of their families… and for the souls of the adults and the peace of those who knew and loved them.


As usual, the smartest comment about the whole subject came from John R. Coyne, Jr. “There is evil in the world. It’s beyond mental illness, beyond gun control. It is evil.”


The killer got his weapons from his mother, who apparently had bought them legally and registered them. That tells us something about what anti-gun laws would do, although maybe the mother should not have had them either. In this world, a killer devil can kill his mother and steal her guns to kill six year olds. That’s what some humans are and I am not sure what laws will stop them.


Second, I read that the killer was socially awkward (putting it mildly) and “reserved.” I know what that often means. He spent much of his miserable life playing shoot ’em up video games on line or on machines. I see a troubled young man doing that often.


Up close and personal.


In these games, the “player” just spends his whole day attempting to exercise and exorcize his loneliness and low self-esteem by shooting imaginary creatures and creating damage all day long.


At a certain point, just “killing” on the console blurs into doing it in real life. “Killing” is just what the kid does all his life. How much of a stretch is it for him to shoot into a movie theater or a political gathering or a kindergarten in “real life” if his life is so pitiful that he does not know what’s real and what is not? If you are looking for a villain, try shoot ’em up games.


Third, what motivates “great” deeds? So that a man’s name will not be forgotten and he will be sung about even after his death, goes the ancient saying. That’s what you get if you slaughter 26 totally innocent people at a grade school. If you want another villain, try the media itself, which has now given Adam Lanza fame beyond what he could have dreamt of. It is impossible to blame the media, but evil men like Adam Lanza have gamed the system to perfection.


Fifth, why are these killers always men? What is it that we teach our young men in this world that makes them think it’s a mark of manliness to kill the unarmed and innocent? Whatever it is, it’s disgusting. It’s not manly to kill any unarmed human. It’s miserable, crawling cowardice.


Finally, a comment that will enrage the beautiful people. The whole world is rightly overwrought and crazed with grief over the murder of twenty totally innocent and blameless souls last Friday in Newtown. It was and is a catastrophe for the ages.


But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promises to kill every Jew in Israel and then in the whole world, including babies… and he had his defenders, even at the Democratic National Convention. And it was daily life in Nazi-occupied Europe from 1939 to 1941 to kill thousands of Jewish children every day.
But powerful, intelligent men and women in this country defended Hitler, spoke up for him and for keeping America from even sending arms to Britain when England stood alone. What are we to make of that? No one even mentions, no one even knows about the horrendous Armenian genocide by the Turks in 1915, when well over a million of the most talented people on the planet were wantonly murdered — and the world has still not officially called it genocide — and Hitler explicitly said it was a model for him. Who today even talks of the purposeful mass starvation of millions of beautiful Ukrainian children by Stalin? The U.S. did not say one word about it as a government. The U.S. still will not confront Turkey seriously about the Armenian children.


Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge killed roughly one third of all of its people, including children, from 1974 to about 1977 — and it was U.S. policy to avoid doing anything to stop them — because they were opposed to the North Vietnamese Communists and Communist Vietnam, which had just taken over South Vietnam — our ally. What can we say to that? We cheered the deposing of the President — Richard Nixon — who would have stopped the Khmer Rouge from taking power. There is plenty of Cambodian blood on our hands. There is plenty of blood of all kinds on our hands, especially of the most innocent and blameless among us… real babies, truly innocent.


God help us. Man is made of such crooked stuff that it is impossible to set him straight, said a famous philosopher. God help us.

[Frequent Flyer]

Originally Posted by Trades

Switzerland, Israel,

800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered in a few months--- and they didn't even need firearms, they used machetes.

[BushyTheBeaver]

Originally Posted by Trades

I thought this post by Ben Stein fit here:

Usually I think Ben Stein is pretty smart, but here, while he's clearly upset, he's kind of just firing widely in all directions.

His points:

1) The shooter was a "killer devil."
2) Gun laws would not have prevented this.
2) Video games are evil and contributed big time to this.
3) The US coddled Hitler.
4) Genocide is evil.

OK Ben. While yer at it, Ziggy is too preachy and the Prevent defense sux.

[Soberphobia]

Originally Posted by JetPotato

e

Your entire argument is based on straw men and ignorance.

And thankfully, we don't really give a damn what anyone on the outside thinks of our " Amendment situation " or anything else for that matter.

Mind your own house and GFY. Braindead is a PERFECT way to describe this.

Straw men and ignorance? Yeah its a straw man that the USA has the highest death rates by gun in the developed world. That's isn't a straw man, its a fact.

And as for our house, we made drastic changes to our gun laws in the wake of a gun related atrocity out here and our deaths by gun dropped drastically.....you may not care what the outside world thinks but if you want a model for what can be achieved on this matter you have no further to look than us. When the laws were changed the sky didn't fall in; people who need weapons can still get them, either for sport, for work or whatever....but now my country is a much safer place because of regulatory change. Something your country desperately needs if it is to stop this unending succession of massacres.

[Trades]

Originally Posted by Soberphobia

Straw men and ignorance? Yeah its a straw man that the USA has the highest death rates by gun in the developed world. That's isn't a straw man, its a fact.

And as for our house, we made drastic changes to our gun laws in the wake of a gun related atrocity out here and our deaths by gun dropped drastically.....you may not care what the outside world thinks but if you want a model for what can be achieved on this matter you have no further to look than us. When the laws were changed the sky didn't fall in; people who need weapons can still get them, either for sport, for work or whatever....but now my country is a much safer place because of regulatory change. Something your country desperately needs if it is to stop this unending succession of massacres.

And what were these amazing changes that made the koala's safe?

[Soberphobia]

Originally Posted by Trades

And what were these amazing changes that made the koala's safe?

The Port Arthur massacre in 1996 transformed gun control legislation in Australia. Thirty five people were killed and 21 wounded when a man with a history of violent and erratic behaviour beginning in early childhood[14] opened fire on shop owners and tourists with two military style semi-automatic rifles. Six weeks after the Dunblane massacre in Scotland,[9] this mass killing at the notorious former convict prison at Port Arthur horrified the Australian public and had powerful political consequences.

The Port Arthur perpetrator said he bought his firearms from a gun dealer without holding the required firearms licence.[15]

Prime Minister John Howard, then newly elected, immediately took the gun law proposals developed from the report of the 1988 National Committee on Violence[16] and forced the states to adopt them under a National Firearms Agreement. This was necessary because the Australian Constitution does not give the Commonwealth power to enact gun laws. The proposals included a ban on all semi-automatic rifles and all semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns, and a tightly restrictive system of licensing and ownership controls.

link

[PlumberKhan]

Originally Posted by BushyTheBeaver

Usually I think Ben Stein is pretty smart, but here, while he's clearly upset, he's kind of just firing widely in all directions.

His points:

1) The shooter was a "killer devil."
2) Gun laws would not have prevented this.
2) Video games are evil and contributed big time to this.
3) The US coddled Hitler.
4) Genocide is evil.

OK Ben. While yer at it, Ziggy is too preachy and the Prevent defense sux.

Ben Stien is a f*cking idiot.

Fake virtual not real guns in video games are to blame.

Actual metal for real actual guns are not.

[Axil]

Originally Posted by Warfish

The topic has become.....just another pawn in the usual folks promoting their usual political agenda.

Some demand new gun laws when current laws aren't enforced and no law apart from a 100% ban would put in adent in gun ownership and gun availabillity for crime.

Some demand draconian limits on entertainment to stop the one in 300,000,000 it might influence to kill.

Some want less testing and less judgment of school teachers.....

Some want Universal Healthcare including Mental Healthcare to catch these kids before they act.

Some want a return to forced Mental Health confinement for the potentially dangerous and derranged, to imprison these kids before they can act.

Some want to say "white America" is racist for only caring now.

Some want to say owning M-16's on full auto should like, totally be legal and stuff, the Constitution man!

Same old story, something happens, and everyone is using it to push their usual agenda days after.

And as usual, once the attention dies down, there will be no agreement, no consesusus, and no change or improements made.

That's democracy!

I think it's natural for people to react to a tragedy by trying to find ways to prevent similar situations from occurring. I think Copernicus genuinely feels like perceived deficiencies in the public school system play a role in creating an environment where these things happen. I think he's wrong, and applying his solution wouldn't address the issue. However i think the gun control solutions that >50% of the posters here seem to believe would help prevent situations like these would be equally ineffective.

There's a fine line between using tragedy for political gain and lamenting what you feel is at least a partial solution to these issues wasn't implemented in time to save lives, and is still lacking today.

I, like Copernicus, believe that the types of shooting that took place in CT are symptomatic of a larger problem. I've already detailed my feelings on what that problem is, and won't rehash it here. Suffice it to say it differs significantly from Copernicus's theory.