Shooting In Oregon

[Garden Girl]

Well, of course THAT would have stopped the shooter. I can see it now: he comes up to the college entrance with his guns and sees the signs. "Oh, darn!" He says to himself. "I'll have to try OSU now."

Yep Gun-Free Zones are the answer, of course.

 

I suspect a mental health issue that may have been treated with drugs that either didn't do the job or made it worse. There was a story that the new president of the College was going to make the place a " no gun zone " .Makes one wonder.

 

From one campus administrator, and the various news reports, the campus WAS/IS a gun free zone... not even the one security guard on duty was carrying a gun... instead he carried Mace...

So the perpetrator takes guns into the gun free zone to do his evil... what good did the campus rules and designation as gun free do in this?  None... that's because you can talk all you want about gun control and make all the strict rules, etc., and it will not really do much to help situations where someone is bent on killing. 

Numerous times it was pointed out that Illinois... Chicago (Obama's home)... has some of the strictest gun control laws on the books.  But every day, every week, the carnage in Chicago is rising from gun violence and shootings.  Statistics were cited showing this to be true, including similar stats for Detroit, and other large cities...

Even if guns were to be outlawed completely except for law enforcement, etc., I'll give dollars to donuts there wouldn't be too much change in gun violence because the criminals would continue to have guns... everyday citizens would not.

So what is the solution?  I really don't know...

I have a permit to carry concealed... I went through training... I do carry...

 

GG

Edited October 3, 2015 by Garden Girl

[Stargazer]

Actually there was a man there with a concealed carry permit.  He didn't use it because he figured by the time he got to the area the Swat team would likely be there and not be able to distinguish between himself and the shooter.  He was hustled into a classroom with other students by a professor who then asked if anyone was carrying.  He said he was and that he would defend himself and everyone else if the need there arose.  IIRC he said there were a number of others who were in the same position he was.  

 

Unless they are right there in the middle of the shooting, I would think many gun carriers, maybe even most, would choose to depend upon police showing up in a timely manner.

 

But perhaps that is what you meant by the right place...right where things are going on so they could act without worrying about confusing law officers because they hadn't arrived yet.

 

The story was linked to on the raw story link that TSS posted, irrc.

I understand the part about being taken for a hostile. Just from an intellectual standpoint, if I had been him I might have thought of this, but the fact of the matter is that it would have been clear there was only one active shooter, and by the time the SWAT arrived, the matter would have been resolved, either with the bad guy down, or the good guy down.

That's intellectually, however. Monday morning quarterbacking. Second guessing the guy in the line of fire. I would not care to critique the actions of those in the hot seat, as it were. I don't know how I would actually act if I were to actually find myself in this kind of situation. Would I freeze up? Turn into a gibbering, terror-struck fool? Having never been in harms way, I can only hope I would behave adequate to the situation.

Because of the fact that I have a permit and I frequently carry a weapon, and habits growing from eight years in the Army, I do tend to keep lines of fire and my surroundings in mind, at least when I enter a new environment. I know this might sound like I'm a braggart, but if I am armed I definitely try to sit where I will probably not be where the opening shots are fired. If it is a single room, I will try to sit where I can see the largest part of the room. I also like to identify routes of retreat. If I am with loved ones, my first priority is their safety, and if possible I would see them out of the danger area before trying engage the threat directly. And with all that, if I ever am in this situation, I will be very interested to see how well I react. I hope I never do see that day.

[Stargazer]

I have a permit to carry concealed... I went through training... I do carry...

 

GG

Sweet! One of these days you and I need to hit the range and bust some caps! My wife was a great shot, from the first time she had a pistol in her hand, and I'll bet you could put holes in lots of cans, too!

[Calm]

Sweet! One of these days you and I need to hit the range and bust some caps! My wife was a great shot, from the first time she had a pistol in her hand, and I'll bet you could put holes in lots of cans, too!

The image of the two of you on a shooting range seeing who is the better shot is cheering me up immensely.

[Stargazer]

The image of the two of you on a shooting range seeing who is the better shot is cheering me up immensely.

Speaking of my sweetheart, she could have gotten to be a crack shot had she wanted to be. As it is, she preferred to keep the home fires burning rather than burning up the range.

I was cheered up by your cheer, too. And then I started getting weepy again. I am a basket case on an emotional roller coaster at the moment. It will sort itself out eventually.

[Garden Girl]

Speaking of my sweetheart, she could have gotten to be a crack shot had she wanted to be. As it is, she preferred to keep the home fires burning rather than burning up the range.

I was cheered up by your cheer, too. And then I started getting weepy again. I am a basket case on an emotional roller coaster at the moment. It will sort itself out eventually.

 

Stargazer...

Many of us keep you in our prayers... the roller coaster is normal... and it does get better with time... The first several weeks after I lost my dear one, I'd be fine and then some times I just sit in the middle of the floor and weep.  Then I'd pick myself up... brush myself off...  ask Heavenly Father to bless me with peace of heart... and continue on... it took a while for me to be able to look at the scrapbooks of pictures, etc.,  Finally I was able to do so, and oh what memories I have...  

Too bad we don't live closer... I'd really love to go target shooting with you...  I'm a pretty good shot actually.  My former bishop was the chief of police, and I go with him and his wife... His wife is a crack shot.  I love to shoot...

 

GG

 

GG

[Stargazer]

Stargazer...

Many of us keep you in our prayers... the roller coaster is normal... and it does get better with time... The first several weeks after I lost my dear one, I'd be fine and then some times I just sit in the middle of the floor and weep.  Then I'd pick myself up... brush myself off...  ask Heavenly Father to bless me with peace of heart... and continue on... it took a while for me to be able to look at the scrapbooks of pictures, etc.,  Finally I was able to do so, and oh what memories I have...  

Too bad we don't live closer... I'd really love to go target shooting with you...  I'm a pretty good shot actually.  My former bishop was the chief of police, and I go with him and his wife... His wife is a crack shot.  I love to shoot...

 

GG

 

GG

Exactly as you say.

[3DOP]

Rory my friend you are right it is the message of Christ in our lives that turns us from being self absorbed to concern for our brothers and sisters.  However don't you think that the "tax funded secular catechism that abhors faith based morality and motives for life" unbalances mental stability just a little? 

 

We definitely need religion in our lives to keep balance and stability. 

 

I once heard a GA (LDS) say that the destroying angels had been unleashed for the last time before Christs coming.  He then made the following comment, I have come to the conclusion they are unplugging peoples thinkers.  I think he was right.

 

Again you are so right.

 

ERay. Hey. 

 

Okay. So why do I tend to deny a mental deficiency? I could be wrong, but I think there is a likelier explanation.

 

Young people are ready to sacrifice. A perceived injustice needs to be righted. Indignation, righteous as it may be against injustice can inflame the soul to the point that it becomes so continuously angry that it has to act. The Epistle from St. Paul to the Ephesians is the reading for this coming Sunday in the Traditional Mass. It allows us to have righteous anger, while at the same time admonishing that it must be tempered. "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." We have to control it. Fools say that our Lord "lost" His temper when He turned over the tables of the money changers in the Temple. But according to St. John's Gospel, He discovered an injustice that outraged his soul. He observed greedy people with no religious sense making money on poor pilgrims who came to the House of His Very Father and God. Outraged? Yes. Angrily, Jesus calmly made a "scourge of small cords", and drove them away explaining to all who would hear why He did so. And that was that. His anger never turned to madness because He controlled it. Righteous anger easily subverts the soul and makes a monster of it. Anger, even if it is directed against a truly outrageous injustice, will do great harm to the soul that does not control it.

 

Without the Gospel, people are being taught that there are there are grave injustices that have been committed against certain groups by other groups. Apparently, this killer in Roseburg agreed with a large part of modern society that Christianity has been an evil that has plagued us for much too long. A few more years and he probably would have mellowed out a bit. Better yet, if only he had known the truth about the Gospel of God's peace, in his youth, he might have known how to deal with his anger. The snares of the devil are so clever. He probably made this guy think he was doing good. He came to not care about his own life, (kind of like a great missionary) but he would leave this world making a statement against what he had been taught was wrong. Properly channeled, his zeal might have made him a great saint. Most of us are mediocre. Kind of lukewarm. There will always be those few among us who have so much zeal that they will be great saints or they will be great devils.

 

God bless,

 

Rory

Edited October 3, 2015 by 3DOP

[thesometimesaint]

Oregon has a goodly set of concealed carry laws, that even includes a training requirement (which will ease TSS's mind). Unfortunately, none were in attendance in the right place yesterday.

Oh, and by definition, someone who has a concealed carry permit is sane. They check on that before issuing the permit.

 

Absolutely false.

SEE http://www.inquisitr.com/2465730/oregon-shooting-john-parker-armed-vet-on-ucc-campus-says-shooting-killer-would-have-been-bad-idea/

[Tacenda]

The image of the two of you on a shooting range seeing who is the better shot is cheering me up immensely.

Having met GG, I can certainly see her toting a gun!  I mean this in the best way, she can hold her own!

 

I've never been to a shooting range, I've only ever shot one pistol and one rifle, that of a policeman who was my best friend's step dad.  Maybe I should look into it.  I've always been on the side...of not carrying or having guns in my home except for maybe a gun for deer hunting.  Which is the only type of gun we have.  Maybe I should re-think this, maybe it was safer in the wild, wild west.

 

There was a hero who's name deserves to be in the limelight though....

 

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2575153-oregon-shooting-hero-chris-mintz-has-amateur-mma-background

[ERayR]

Stargazer...

Many of us keep you in our prayers... the roller coaster is normal... and it does get better with time... The first several weeks after I lost my dear one, I'd be fine and then some times I just sit in the middle of the floor and weep.  Then I'd pick myself up... brush myself off...  ask Heavenly Father to bless me with peace of heart... and continue on... it took a while for me to be able to look at the scrapbooks of pictures, etc.,  Finally I was able to do so, and oh what memories I have...  

Too bad we don't live closer... I'd really love to go target shooting with you...  I'm a pretty good shot actually.  My former bishop was the chief of police, and I go with him and his wife... His wife is a crack shot.  I love to shoot...

 

GG

 

GG

 

And after over a year it is much better but occasionally a stray thought or something else brings memories that cause some tears. 

[ERayR]

ERay. Hey. 

 

Okay. So why do I tend to deny a mental deficiency? I could be wrong, but I think there is a likelier explanation.

 

Young people are ready to sacrifice. A perceived injustice needs to be righted. Indignation, righteous as it may be against injustice can inflame the soul to the point that it becomes so continuously angry that it has to act. The Epistle from St. Paul to the Ephesians is the reading for this coming Sunday in the Traditional Mass. It allows us to have righteous anger, while at the same time admonishing that it must be tempered. "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." We have to control it. Fools say that our Lord "lost" His temper when He turned over the tables of the money changers in the Temple. But according to St. John's Gospel, He discovered an injustice that outraged his soul. He observed greedy people with no religious sense making money on poor pilgrims who came to the House of His Very Father and God. Outraged? Yes. Angrily, Jesus calmly made a "scourge of small cords", and drove them away explaining to all who would hear why He did so. And that was that. His anger never turned to madness because He controlled it. Righteous anger easily subverts the soul and makes a monster of it. Anger, even if it is directed against a truly outrageous injustice, will do great harm to the soul that does not control it.

 

Without the Gospel, people are being taught that there are there are grave injustices that have been committed against certain groups by other groups. Apparently, this killer in Roseburg agreed with a large part of modern society that Christianity has been an evil that has plagued us for much too long. A few more years and he probably would have mellowed out a bit. Better yet, if only he had known the truth about the Gospel of God's peace, in his youth, he might have known how to deal with his anger. The snares of the devil are so clever. He probably made this guy think he was doing good. He came to not care about his own life, (kind of like a great missionary) but he would leave this world making a statement against what he had been taught was wrong. Properly channeled, his zeal might have made him a great saint. Most of us are mediocre. Kind of lukewarm. There will always be those few among us who have so much zeal that they will be great saints or they will be great devils.

 

God bless,

 

Rory

 

You have provided me with much to contemplate.  It is so easy to pass something like this off as some nut flying off and I fell right into it but you are right. 

[ERayR]

Having met GG, I can certainly see her toting a gun!  I mean this in the best way, she can hold her own!

 

I've never been to a shooting range, I've only ever shot one pistol and one rifle, that of a policeman who was my best friend's step dad.  Maybe I should look into it.  I've always been on the side...of not carrying or having guns in my home except for maybe a gun for deer hunting.  Which is the only type of gun we have.  Maybe I should re-think this, maybe it was safer in the wild, wild west.

 

There was a hero who's name deserves to be in the limelight though....

 

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2575153-oregon-shooting-hero-chris-mintz-has-amateur-mma-background

 

Chris certainly is a hero. 

[The Nehor]

Well, of course THAT would have stopped the shooter. I can see it now: he comes up to the college entrance with his guns and sees the signs. "Oh, darn!" He says to himself. "I'll have to try OSU now."

Yep Gun-Free Zones are the answer, of course.

 

http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-prevent-says-only-nation-where-regularly-ha-51444

[Stargazer]

Absolutely false.

SEE http://www.inquisitr.com/2465730/oregon-shooting-john-parker-armed-vet-on-ucc-campus-says-shooting-killer-would-have-been-bad-idea/

 

I did not read whatever it was that you linked to, tss.  I clicked on it and something in the web page took over my browser and I had to go to Task Manager to close IE because whatever it was wouldn't let me close it.  All my tabs lost their icons and texts, I started getting new tabs popping up unbidden, etc.  So I'll take you word for it that whatever it was I said was "Absolutely false."

 

Yeah, I was certainly overgeneralizing.  If the background check finds a professional judgment as to you're being a sociopath or some such, yes, then they won't grant you a CCP.  But since not all psychos get their names into the system, there are bound to be those who are psychos who get a permit.

 

But here's the thing, which I am sure you will acknowledge.  Quite apart from whether or not a psycho can or cannot get a CCP, a true psycho doesn't give a fig.  He (or she) will carry concealed anyway, and so will any given criminal who can't get a CCP because of criminal history. 

 

The generalization I was going for is this: by and large, those who are issued CCP's are sane and law-abiding citizens who can probably be trusted to use their weapons in a responsible manner.  Of course there are exceptions, but as far as I have been able to tell, those exceptions are few and far between.

 

Or were you declaring "absolutely false" the idea that Oregon's training requirements would ease your mind?

Edited October 3, 2015 by Stargazer

[Stargazer]

http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way-prevent-says-only-nation-where-regularly-ha-51444

The article you reference contains a claim (by author Julie Bloom) that "Americans are 20 times as likely to die from gun violence as citizens of other civilized countries."

Can we agree about the following?

1. Murder is murder regardless of which tool a perpetrator uses to commit it.

2. Whether singly or in mass, murder is murder.

If you can't agree that it doesn't matter whether a murderer dispatches you with a knife, gun or baseball bat, and it doesn't matter if the murderer knocks off one person or twenty at a time, then I don't know what to tell you. But if this is how you think, there's no point in discussing the matter with you because you're operating from an irrational premise.

The facts are tellingly different from Ms. Bloom's claims, at least they do when we abandon her gun-centricism. However getting to the heart of the matter can be difficult because the definition of "civilized" can get fairly squishy. Which countries does Bloom consider non-civilized? Is Ethiopia not civilized? How about Brazil? Or Switzerland or Sweden? And irrespective of which countries I count as civilized, which countries is she thinking of? Going through the list of countries in the world for which we have murder statistics (there are 217 such), I will of myself choose which are not civilized and look only at the reaminder as civilized. I will also exclude micro-countries such as Liechtenstein (had 0 murders in 2012) and little polities actually owned lock stock and barrel by other countries. My list starts with 217 countries (this is sourced from the Wikipedia article on "List of countries by intentional homicide rate", which itself is sourced from United Nations data). After also cutting countries of less than a million population, I am left with 151. I then arbitrarily cut out some that I don't think are "civilized", and this leaves me with 109 countries.

In my list of intentional homicides by country I find that the USA is #67 with 4.7 murders per 100,000 persons. Of the countries with a lower rate there are Japan (0.3) and Switzerland (0.6) and Indonesia (0.6). Of those with higher rates are Russia (9.2), Brazil (25.2) and Jamaica (39.3).

In short, to say that a citizen of the USA is 20 times more likely to be murdered by a firearm than any other civilized countries is false. And the idea that somehow stricter gun control leads to a lower murder rate does not stand on firm ground, either. The USA is firmly in the middle of civilized countries with regard to murder rates. Japan has a miniscule murder rate, and very strict gun laws, yes, but Switzerland (which doesn't have an Army but IS an army) has just as low a rate. Russia, Brazil and Jamaica have quite strict gun control laws, and their murder rates are over the top.

Even within the United States, if you examine and compare rates of firearms ownership and firearms restrictions you will discover that the places of greatest anti-gun legislation tend to be places of greater gun violence.

And President Obama, who wants to enact Chicago-style gun legislation throughout the United States, well, he should have a look at Chicago, which is one of the deadliest cities in the USA for gun violence.

 

I base my conclusions on the numbers found in the Wikipedia article List of countries by intentional homicide rate

 

 

Edited October 3, 2015 by Stargazer

[strappinglad]

Yes murder is murder, whether one or twenty. There is something special about the mass murders in the US though. I would hope that there would be a different outcome had the latest killer been armed only with a knife or two and not several handguns. Would the student Chris have been able to subdue the killer quicker? Would fewer been killed or wounded? Would the time taken be stretched to allow response from authorities earlier in the fray? How many students would have stood up and waited for a knife to the chest? The fact that a handgun can wreck havoc quickly and at a much greater distance than a knife or bat does enter into the discussion. An AR15 compounds the problem. I am of two minds when thinking about the issue. Part of me recognizes that little can be done to stop a killer in advance. Another thinks that perhaps there is a way to reduce the death toll from 10 to 2 . What can be done to change a culture is WAY above my pay grade.

[ERayR]

Yes murder is murder, whether one or twenty. There is something special about the mass murders in the US though. I would hope that there would be a different outcome had the latest killer been armed only with a knife or two and not several handguns. Would the student Chris have been able to subdue the killer quicker? Would fewer been killed or wounded? Would the time taken be stretched to allow response from authorities earlier in the fray? How many students would have stood up and waited for a knife to the chest? The fact that a handgun can wreck havoc quickly and at a much greater distance than a knife or bat does enter into the discussion. An AR15 compounds the problem. I am of two minds when thinking about the issue. Part of me recognizes that little can be done to stop a killer in advance. Another thinks that perhaps there is a way to reduce the death toll from 10 to 2 . What can be done to change a culture is WAY above my pay grade.

 

More misionaries.

[strappinglad]

There are some areas of the world where it might be advisable for missionaries to be issued a Glock. Doesn't fit with the image of course. I do know that in my mission ( Central America ) we missionaries we routinely assumed to be FBI or CIA and likely armed.

[The Nehor]

 

The article you reference contains a claim (by author Julie Bloom) that "Americans are 20 times as likely to die from gun violence as citizens of other civilized countries."

Can we agree about the following?

1. Murder is murder regardless of which tool a perpetrator uses to commit it.

2. Whether singly or in mass, murder is murder.

If you can't agree that it doesn't matter whether a murderer dispatches you with a knife, gun or baseball bat, and it doesn't matter if the murderer knocks off one person or twenty at a time, then I don't know what to tell you. But if this is how you think, there's no point in discussing the matter with you because you're operating from an irrational premise.

The facts are tellingly different from Ms. Bloom's claims, at least they do when we abandon her gun-centricism. However getting to the heart of the matter can be difficult because the definition of "civilized" can get fairly squishy. Which countries does Bloom consider non-civilized? Is Ethiopia not civilized? How about Brazil? Or Switzerland or Sweden? And irrespective of which countries I count as civilized, which countries is she thinking of? Going through the list of countries in the world for which we have murder statistics (there are 217 such), I will of myself choose which are not civilized and look only at the reaminder as civilized. I will also exclude micro-countries such as Liechtenstein (had 0 murders in 2012) and little polities actually owned lock stock and barrel by other countries. My list starts with 217 countries (this is sourced from the Wikipedia article on "List of countries by intentional homicide rate", which itself is sourced from United Nations data). After also cutting countries of less than a million population, I am left with 151. I then arbitrarily cut out some that I don't think are "civilized", and this leaves me with 109 countries.

In my list of intentional homicides by country I find that the USA is #67 with 4.7 murders per 100,000 persons. Of the countries with a lower rate there are Japan (0.3) and Switzerland (0.6) and Indonesia (0.6). Of those with higher rates are Russia (9.2), Brazil (25.2) and Jamaica (39.3).

In short, to say that a citizen of the USA is 20 times more likely to be murdered by a firearm than any other civilized countries is false. And the idea that somehow stricter gun control leads to a lower murder rate does not stand on firm ground, either. The USA is firmly in the middle of civilized countries with regard to murder rates. Japan has a miniscule murder rate, and very strict gun laws, yes, but Switzerland (which doesn't have an Army but IS an army) has just as low a rate. Russia, Brazil and Jamaica have quite strict gun control laws, and their murder rates are over the top.

Even within the United States, if you examine and compare rates of firearms ownership and firearms restrictions you will discover that the places of greatest anti-gun legislation tend to be places of greater gun violence.

And President Obama, who wants to enact Chicago-style gun legislation throughout the United States, well, he should have a look at Chicago, which is one of the deadliest cities in the USA for gun violence.

 

I base my conclusions on the numbers found in the Wikipedia article List of countries by intentional homicide rate

 

The idea that " it does not matter how you kill someone you are still dead" is true on the individual level but false on a more practical one.

 

A gun lets you kill more people more quickly then any other weapon. You do not hear about mass knife killings or mass clubbed-to-death killings because it is difficult to pull off. A gun is an equalizer because it takes little training to use and can kill in rapid succession. I have trained to fight with a knife and if I ran into a room filled with people and started killing as quickly as I could (thrusts at vital organs) a numbskull with a gun could kill more people much faster.

 

I am not anti-Second Amendment but some people are in denial about how guns change the equation of violence. There is a reason they were a military game changer. In the past it took extensive training to master the spear or the sword or the bow and it took extensive skill and strength training to use them effectively. Guns are much easier to use effectively.

[mtomm]

We really need to be asking those countries with little to no mass shootings how they have cured mental illness. That's seems like a pretty simple solution, since according to my Facebook it isn't about the guns.

Edited October 4, 2015 by mtomm

[The Nehor]

There are some areas of the world where it might be advisable for missionaries to be issued a Glock. Doesn't fit with the image of course. I do know that in my mission ( Central America ) we missionaries we routinely assumed to be FBI or CIA and likely armed.

 

Not unless you train them on how to use and, as much as possible, make sure they are willing to pull the trigger. A gun rarely works as a threat unless you are mentally and emotionally able to follow through with pulling it. I doubt most missionaries would be. If they are not giving them a gun is putting them in more danger.

[Stargazer]

Yes murder is murder, whether one or twenty. There is something special about the mass murders in the US though. I would hope that there would be a different outcome had the latest killer been armed only with a knife or two and not several handguns. Would the student Chris have been able to subdue the killer quicker? Would fewer been killed or wounded? Would the time taken be stretched to allow response from authorities earlier in the fray? How many students would have stood up and waited for a knife to the chest? The fact that a handgun can wreck havoc quickly and at a much greater distance than a knife or bat does enter into the discussion. An AR15 compounds the problem. I am of two minds when thinking about the issue. Part of me recognizes that little can be done to stop a killer in advance. Another thinks that perhaps there is a way to reduce the death toll from 10 to 2 . What can be done to change a culture is WAY above my pay grade.

 

Boguser words were never written, strapping.  There is nothing special about the mass murders in the US.  In other countries it's suicide bombers.  A knife-wielding person can kill just as well as a pistol packer.  Knives, for a start, do not run out of edge or point the way a pistol runs out of ammo.  People make a huge mistake when they think that it is somehow safer to face a knife than a gun.  One of my sons was at his favorite bar one night (yes, he's a redneck), and a guy with a knife came in, stabbed his friend to death, and as my son and another friend of his attempted to stop him, the killer stabbed them once each, putting them both into the hospital.  Then he ran out of the bar and was eventually captured.  My son and the other guy survived.  My son was wearing a leather jacket so the wound wasn't too bad, but the killer could have struck at him more than once and might have killed him too.  All this happened in just fifteen seconds or so.  Worse, nobody realized that the guy was being killed because the knife attack was silent.  Eric saw what was happening, but was unsure how to interpret it at first.  He asked the killer, "Is that a knife?" whereupon he said "Yes, it is!" and stabbed Eric in the ribs.

 

The handgun is loud, easily detected when used.  Sure you can shoot quickly, but many people can't hit the side of a barn with only one shot.  In the time this guy had in the classroom, you'd think he could have killed them all, if it were so darned efficient.  But it isn't a magic weapon.  Sure you can do a lot of damage to targets right in front of you, but at longer distances it gets much harder unless you have trained and practiced a LOT.  Surely you know of stories where trained police officers empty their 15-round magazines at a perp and get maybe two or three hits?  Or none?

 

In March 2014 in a train station in Yunnan, China, ten men wielding knives and cleavers killed 29 people and wounded 130.  Read about it here: http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/01/world/asia/china-railway-attack/index.html   China has experienced a number of mass knife attacks in recent years.  Are you any less dead if you get killed by a knife?  It's like Hiroshima and Nagasaki: it is so terrible to be killed by nuclear bombs, and we make a huge deal about these two events, but the Operation Meetinghouse firebombing of Tokyo on the night of 9 March 1945 was the single deadliest air raid of World War II, greater than Dresden, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki as single events.  Virtually nobody remembers Tokyo, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki get all the tears, as if it were somehow worse to be nuked.  It isn't!  Or how about the Rape of Nanking?  The Japanese Army killed up to 300,000 Chinese civilians over a six week period after the surrender of the city on Dec 13, 1937, and over a four year period from 1945 to 1949 the Soviets effectively murdered nearly half of the 500,000 German civilians they took for forced labor in 1945, and who even knows about it or cares?  My future father-in-law died in that little holocaust, by the way.

 

But let some little baby nutjob kill a few people in a classroom, and instead of wanting to deal with the problem of nutjobs, they want to take the tools away that the nutjob used!  What if he had used knives?  Would President Obama had called for knife control laws to be strengthened?  Fat chance.

 

No, I get tired of airheads attacking the wrong problem and expecting to change the results. As a contrary example, the right response to high automobile accident deaths is to make cars safer, not to outlaw cars. 

 

Don't bother answering me with even more bogus "facts".  I am a professionally trained killer, er, combat soldier (courtesy of the United States Army), and give me a gun or give me a knife (or for that matter a baseball bat), and I know I could do a lot of damage regardless of the tool.  In fact, I might even prefer a knife because my acts would go under the radar for a lot longer before the cops were called.

 

And yes!  I am really ticked off.  Not at you in particular, strapping, but at the complete lack of critical thinking skills on evidence among the people (our politicians) who ought to freaking know better, but who simply repeat politically-correct mantras as if doing what has been proven not to work before had a hope of solving the problem.

 

Please ban me from the thread before I say something that will offend someone.  It's probably too late.

 

I'm outta here.

[Stargazer]

The idea that " it does not matter how you kill someone you are still dead" is true on the individual level but false on a more practical one.

 

A gun lets you kill more people more quickly then any other weapon. You do not hear about mass knife killings or mass clubbed-to-death killings because it is difficult to pull off. A gun is an equalizer because it takes little training to use and can kill in rapid succession. I have trained to fight with a knife and if I ran into a room filled with people and started killing as quickly as I could (thrusts at vital organs) a numbskull with a gun could kill more people much faster.

 

I am not anti-Second Amendment but some people are in denial about how guns change the equation of violence. There is a reason they were a military game changer. In the past it took extensive training to master the spear or the sword or the bow and it took extensive skill and strength training to use them effectively. Guns are much easier to use effectively.

 

I've already answered this completely false claim (in red), so I won't ask you to do a CFR on a negative.   Check my response to strappinglad.  Or you could Google the Rwandan Genocide -- the primary weapon used was the machete. 

 

And yes, if you bring a knife to a gunfight you will get your head handed to you in short order, but nobody in that classroom had a gun, so he could have used a knife to kill that many people in the time he used to kill them with a gun.  It takes just a second to slash someone's throat.

 

And why do you bring up an irrelevancy like a sword or a bow?  All he needed for that crowd was a K-Bar.  Actually, all he needed was a spear.  A standoff weapon, no need to get up close and personal. 

 

Just stop it about the gun vs knife debate.  Identify the nutjobs and put them into proactive custody, like they used to do before bleeding hearts threw them out onto the streets.

Edited October 4, 2015 by Stargazer

[Stargazer]

Not unless you train them on how to use and, as much as possible, make sure they are willing to pull the trigger. A gun rarely works as a threat unless you are mentally and emotionally able to follow through with pulling it. I doubt most missionaries would be. If they are not giving them a gun is putting them in more danger.

 

Are you kidding me?  I am rather fond of those videos on YouTube showing convenience store clerks ignoring guns pointed at them by robbers, who then proceed to beat at the robber with whatever is available, whereupon the robber just runs away.  That genre of video is called "Instant Karma" by the way.  But they don't show the surveillance videos of clerks who just hand the money over, or the bank tellers who just fill the bag with cash in the face of a gun, which happens far more frequently.  Despite what you say, most of us take a gun in the face as a genuine threat and do not pause to psychoanalyse the crook to determine if he REALLY wants to pull the trigger or not.  In fact, if you work at a convenience store, I think most such people are instructed to just hand the cash over, no questions asked.  Years ago I was in fact acquainted with a convenience store owner whose night clerk beat off an armed robber with a telephone handset.  He later told her next time just hand the damned money over and don't do heroics like that ever again.

 

But I agree that missionaries should not go about their work armed, as a general rule.  Although there is that pesky scripture where Jesus told his Apostles they should sell their cloaks and buy a sword.  Not sure what to make of that one.