Another school shooting

JonH · All-time great

Another school shooting

JonH · All-time great

to add to this. I used to visit USA a lot. On business, and on holiday a lot , to Florida. America now scares me. Not just the guns but the relationship in the country with the Black population; the way the prisons and jails operate. Trump.There is so much good this country could do, but it seems such a broken place.

We had been talking about possibly going to Florida for a holiday in October half term or around Xmas. Not now. Not because I am scared. Because I cant support a country where this happens and they never, ever learn or seem to want to learn

-- Edited by JonH on Thursday 15th of February 2018 12:47:49 PM

Sim · County player

I lived in the USA for 2 years from 2011 and have talked to lots of Americans about this. There is a deep split but the pro gun lobby with the NRA is so strong and they just repeat the same mantras like "guns don't kill, people do". With a knife probably only 1 person would have died yesterday and 1 or 2 been injured before the assailant was overpowered, but with a gun they can kill so many more. Imagine what would have happened in some of the recent attacks in the UK if guns had been involved.

Hunting with rifles is pretty widespread, all the local sports shops had large areas dedicated to hunting, and our youngest daughter who was 11 had a friend who used to go hunting deer.

Any attempt to restrict fire-arms is seen as the thin end of the wedge with the ultimate conclusion being that it will lead to a ban on all guns.

Just one conversation

Q "Why do you need an automatic rifle to shot deer"

A "You never know I might be attacked by a wolf or bear"

This is in Pennsylvania. The nearest wolf is hundreds of miles away and the only fatal bear attack in 100 years was by a "pet" bear

One of the latest responses to all the school shootings is to arm more teachers........

indiana · Tennis legend

Very sad that innocent Americans have to endure so many such incidents, quite apart from the general homicide rate. And they have a President that throws stones at so many safer countries and in many ways better societies.

RIP

blob · All-time great

Americans vote for this, that's their business, the problem is obvious, and has been solved by countries like Australia and Switzerland that had a similar problem in the past, although relative orders of magnitude smaller than the USA's

Spot the outlier:

I could post any other number of charts and/or data that show that the more guns in an area, the higher the rate of both gun violence, and overall violent crime per 100K of population in America, that is true at state, city, municipal, county level. There's no politics to it. The more guns you have, the more they are used to kill other human beings.

Here's where we remember that the American CDC is forbidden BY LAW from studying gun violence as a public health problem, as a result of NRA lobbying and wholesale purchase of GOP lawmakers. Florida poplice forces are forbidden BY LAW from keeping records on gun violence on electronic systems, all records relating to gun violence must be kept on paper only, and they tend to go missing - often.

But, again, America votes for it, so they make their choice. In New York (state) they enacted the SAFE law in 2013, and essentially elimnated school shootings. It banned AR-15 assault rifles (the one used in Florida, and Newtown in 2012; and in San Bernardino; and in Orlando in 2016; and in Las Vegas, 2017; and in Sutherland Springs in 2017; and in...) and required mental health professionals to share findings that indicate a propensity for violence, and have those individuals put on a register that restricts access to firearms. (Trump's only firearms legislation since taking office was to undo a similar national measure enacted by Obama)
But, that's not the point. Exit polls in the round of elections shortly thereafter show that three legislative seats were lost because the representatives voted for the life saving, gun reform, law. Zero seats were lost by representatives that voted against it.

Regardless of the polling showing >70% of Americans favour some form of gun reform, in reality politicians lose elections for favoring gun control not for opposing it - even in states like New York. The intensity of the pro-gun lobbys desire to prevent that reform, and their organization and financing to ensure that goal matters, a lot.

If America cared about this, they'd actually vote on the issue, rather than saying they do in polls immediately after the latest atrocity, but going to the polls in actual elections, and voting for tax cuts or other issues instead.

Really scary final thought: The NRA have started tentative lobbying here. Here is their last round of (ultimately stunningly successful - all their policy proposals got passed, and the ones they wanted blocked were blocked) lobbying in the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtGOQFf9VCE
That's not some fringe group, that's the group that rates all lawmakers with a grade, and if they give you less than an A rating, in about 30 states, you simply can't get elected in ~85% of districts.

Luckily, the idiotic and self-defeating issues we vote for here generation after generation, are a deal less... terminal... well, for now...

JonH · All-time great

blob wrote:
Americans vote for this, that's their business, the problem is obvious, and has been solved by countries like Australia and Switzerland that had a similar problem in the past, although relative orders of magnitude smaller than the USA's
Spot the outlier:
I could post any other number of charts and/or data that show that the more guns in an area, the higher the rate of both gun violence, and overall violent crime per 100K of population in America, that is true at state, city, municipal, county level. There's no politics to it. The more guns you have, the more they are used to kill other human beings.
Here's where we remember that the American CDC is forbidden BY LAW from studying gun violence as a public health problem, as a result of NRA lobbying and wholesale purchase of GOP lawmakers. Florida poplice forces are forbidden BY LAW from keeping records on gun violence on electronic systems, all records relating to gun violence must be kept on paper only, and they tend to go missing - often.
But, again, America votes for it, so they make their choice. In New York (state) they enacted the SAFE law in 2013, and essentially elimnated school shootings. It banned AR-15 assault rifles (the one used in Florida, and Newtown in 2012; and in San Bernardino; and in Orlando in 2016; and in Las Vegas, 2017; and in Sutherland Springs in 2017; and in...) and required mental health professionals to share findings that indicate a propensity for violence, and have those individuals put on a register that restricts access to firearms. (Trump's only firearms legislation since taking office was to undo a similar national measure enacted by Obama)
But, that's not the point. Exit polls in the round of elections shortly thereafter show that three legislative seats were lost because the representatives voted for the life saving, gun reform, law. Zero seats were lost by representatives that voted against it.
Regardless of the polling showing >70% of Americans favour some form of gun reform, in reality politicians lose elections for favoring gun control not for opposing it - even in states like New York. The intensity of the pro-gun lobbys desire to prevent that reform, and their organization and financing to ensure that goal matters, a lot.
If America cared about this, they'd actually vote on the issue, rather than saying they do in polls immediately after the latest atrocity, but going to the polls in actual elections, and voting for tax cuts or other issues instead.
Really scary final thought: The NRA have started tentative lobbying here. Here is their last round of (ultimately stunningly successful - all their policy proposals got passed, and the ones they wanted blocked were blocked) lobbying in the US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtGOQFf9VCE
That's not some fringe group, that's the group that rates all lawmakers with a grade, and if they give you less than an A rating, in about 30 states, you simply can't get elected in ~85% of districts.
Luckily, the idiotic and self-defeating issues we vote for here generation after generation, are a deal less... terminal... well, for now...

Then the country is broken. Not just a little bit but massively because the analysis makes no sense morally or logically. If the NRA argument comes back to "it is our right under law as part of the founding principles of our country and we cannot change that law or that right" then it flies in the face of every single law and improvement made in all other countries as the country progresses and matures. A world 250 years ago is not todays world and no "right" put in place has a "right" to stand in the modern day without total scrutiny. If it isn't the country that is broken then at the very least it is the constitution and the political world that America has put in place. And if that is the case, then surely that form of democracy is broken as well

PS great analysis BTW!