 ashleystar says: em hi, can we do something about this please? thanks. Yes, we can ease restrictions for law-abiding citizens to carry where they please. One calm, armed teacher with a steady arm could have taken him down before 31 lives were destroyed like cattle in a pen. Yes, we can ease restrictions for law-abiding citizens to carry where they please. One calm, armed teacher with a steady arm could have taken him down before 31 lives were destroyed like cattle in a pen.No reason to write up my own reply when this one sums it up so well. true. but this isn't the teacher's problem or responsibility. let's get to the *root* of this issue, shall we? The root of the problem is there are bad people out there and law abiding citizens shouldn't have their right to defend themselves removed in order to make it just slightly more difficult (or one can argue easier) for those people to carry out their plans. ashleystar, I think Virginia Tech University Prof. Liviu Librescu would beg to differ on it not being the teacher's problem or responsibility. If it was harder for him to get the gun, he may not have committed the crime. Also if his only option to buy a gun was for a rifle (hunting style, not automatic), then he would have been stopped sooner (it would have been very hard for him to blend into the crown with a 12 gage...). But no.. instead of limiting the ability to purchase a hand gun, we should just arm everyone... brilliant. crown == crowd... oops.. If it were harder for him to get the gun, it's relatively simple to build bombs and other weapons from common household items. But before he could use ANY weapon against someone, if he were caught doing so, an armed teacher could stop him. I find it less brilliant to allow people to be essentially mowed down en masse, because we're not willing to let the majority of sane people be licensed to carry. yes i'm sure a homemade weapon is highly likely given no other options? come on. the ease in acquiring firearms makes it easier for low-lifes to do shit like this. i live in philadephia. in pa, you can acquire a handgun without a license. violence, especially within the younger generation of the population is *soaring* in this city, why? because they figure, *why not*. If the kids in my part of town couldn't come accross a gun, i know for damn sure they're not going to make one. it's not simple enough to do and it requires *work* that only madmen are willing to achieve (i.e. unibomber). i really can't see unibombers popping up all over the country as a result of limited gun use. A homemade bomb can be accomplished quickly and simply. It's actually easier than going out and getting that handgun because it involves household items that are already available. Confirmed this with many military friends. My point being, someone wanting to do harm either to an individual or en masse will find a way. Banning guns from lawful citizens will only make their mission easier. i beg to differ. but, whatevs... I would prefer a bullet over a homemade bomb, bludgeoning, stabbing, or whatever barbaric form a wacko like that would use. Why do you think that tourists from out of state are targets in areas like Florida. The criminals know that a resident can legally carry a firearm, where as the tourist will most likely not be carrying a firearm? If you were a criminal where would you place your bet? Interesting map. I see that the more restrictive the area on its citizens concerning guns, the higher the crime rate. Thanks for pinpointing my point. i beg to differ once again on that correlation you've assumed. that link was not meant to pinpoint your point but to bring awareness to the fact that gun violence simply sucks. i don't care about your religion. no one wants to bring that up, so remain thankful. this was clipped out of sadness from what happened at V.tech and not to serve as a soapbox for opinion. thanks for making it as such... Gun violence DOES suck. Agreed. My religion was never a part of this discussion. Red herring. Clipmarks IS a soapbox for opinions. Otherwise, why bother commenting at all? Hey, AshleyStar....if you don't want to own a gun, that's fine. But please don't tell others that they cannot. The truth is gun ownership makes communities safer. It is the places where guns are restricted and prohibited who have the highest crime rates. Places that make gun ownership mandatory or encourage it, have the lowest crime rates. The root cause of this debate is ignorance....yours to be more direct. I live in Australia, and the only people who legally own guns have a strict license as a sporting shooter, farming, or hunters. We have few gun problems, especially since we had 35 killed by a 'nutter' in Tasmania 10 years ago. The government called in all privately owned automatic weapons and destroyed them. Our country can not understand this need to be armed to the teeth, and we feel no need for them for protection. Sure there are bad guys out there with guns, but I know of no-one who has been exposed to one. Guns are mostly for killing living things. Why does US need them???? when did i tell anyone they couldn't own a gun? such an ignorant statement. i've never expressed my full opinion on gun use. i completely understand how they can help protect and for sport. i understand this but still i don't think it's right, however, as long as innocent lives aren't subjected to its use it's fine by me. now. in terms of owning a gun, the ease with which they can be obtained and utilized for reasons such as what i have clipped, then it becomes a huge problem - far from a debate of ignorance. i don't clip for comments. i appreciate them and it's humbling to see the opinions of others. i clip items i find interesting and worth remembering, that's all. i real... Sorry, hon. By it's very nature, Clipmarks is set up for commentary, even if you don't want them. Nature of the beast. You have the ability, however, to not respond. Speaking as a teacher who works in a small college campus, the idea that having more guns lying around waiting to be used would make everyone safer is ludicrous. If it gets to the point that professors need to arm themselves and get training in how to "take down" their students if they get out of hand, I personally am getting out of the business, and so is everyone else I know. As to arming students generally, been to any frat parties lately? Yeah, it'd be really cool if at every one of those drunken orgies there were a few dozen guns in people's pockets. I guarantee you the death toll would exceed this week's in a single weekend of partying. No respect for what a gun is and what it can do is the EXACT same thing as drinking and driving a car. Both USUALLY require some form of permit or license to own and or operate. Yet, people who buy a gun and commit intentional murder break the laws. As n2sooners pointed out, we have plenty of speed limits and penalties for breaking those laws. People still do it and will continue to do so. So maybe we should ban ALL CARS since a small minority of people aren't responsible enough to own and operate them. After all, drunk drivers kill someone every 32 seconds here in the US. CARS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, PEOPLE DO. GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, PEOPLE DO. CARS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, PEOPLE DO. GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, PEOPLE DO. i totally agree with this. cars are meant to drive. guns are meant to kill. Cars are not meant to be driven by drunk drivers....but they are. Just as guns are not meant to kill innocent people, but they are. good point. but cars have the ability to kill as opposed to having an ultimate purpose to kill. Guns are used in the Olympics by qualified (stable) competitors. These guns(both rifles and pistols) shoot at targets, not people. Yet those same guns could be used on people. Same argument goes for everything else. Of course it has a primary purpose, the most used purpose. Knives are used for cutting things, like your meal, yet they too can be used to kill someone. Bottom line- No inanimate object is evil, only people are. So if you want to solve the gun problem ban evil people. Good luck with that. If you take this kind of logic to its natural conclusion, there's no reason to regulate anything. How about illegal drugs? They're harmless if properly used, right? To me, the question is, would I rather live in a town full of guns, or a town with hardly any? For me, I'd take the latter. You may prefer the former. To my mind, the statistics generally seem to show that I'd be safer than you, but then again, there are a lot of ways of reading those statistics. Maybe if the laws we have had just been followed. He should never have been sold a gun in the first place since he had been committed to a mental institution. There are already laws in place that should have prevented him from legally owning a gun, but someone somewhere dropped the ball. But I bet that still won't stop people from trying to make new laws to prevent law abiding citizen from exercising their constitutional right to own a gun. POPPED - For above comment. Actually last time I checked illegal drugs were illegal for a reason; namely because they are detrimental to your health. Since when has there been a right way to snort cocaine or shoot heroine? I agree with copespeak... In Canada, our laws are similar to Australia's.. we also have very little gun violence (relative to the US). IMO, no civilian should be able to own a gun, period. You want to hunt? sign one out for the period of time you are hunting. Want to sport shoot? Go to the range & sign a gun out. Anyone caught with a gun should receive a mandatory sentance. Same as being caught with drugs. (Personally, however I think marijuana should be legal.. it is less harmful than alcohol & tobacco..). IF guns were indeed really hard to get, the WOULD be less gun related deaths (like in Canada, Australia, etc). But no.. some damned piece of paper written by people who lived in... That "damned piece of paper" created a nation that one would day be a superpower. It has been around for a long time for a reason. If he didn't have a glock he would have a knife. Anything can be considered a weapon and to say that guns are the reason for the world's problems is just naive. Criminals will always find a way to threaten others be it with a gun or any other weapon. Therefore, law abiding citizens should be allowed to defend themselves by any and all means allowed by the constitution (or i guess in your terms "a damned piece of paper"). This "superpower" has been around for a scant 200+ years, a blip on the radar in terms of human history. Never depend on a piece of paper to hold a nation in check that allows their citizens to be run over by the Gov't. Otherwise, I agree with your statement. Time has nothing to do with being a superpower. It's obvious we are one of the major players in the world (aka superpower). I didn't know a government could run over their citizens considering the citizens give the government its power. Are you suggesting we would be better off in an anarchy? No, I'm suggesting that throughout history, there have been quite a number of civilizations that thought themselves invincible. Citizens give the Gov't their power, and citizens that have become complacent in the idea that they are invincible superpowers tend to have that very structure crumble. Back on track- I'm quoting clipmarks user michellzml here as her response defies all that this thread suggests- with the TRUTH no less! michellezmI live in South Africa, a country that has the highest murder, rape and highjacking statistics in the world. Our gun ownership laws are much tighter than those in the USA. But, people are still being murdered, and by a variety of weapons. My point is, where there is an evil will, there will be an evil way. If it's not a gun, it will be another weapon. Thus, in a gun-saturated country like the USA you are still statistically safer than we are, where legal guns are (supposedly) strictly controlled. Guns don't kill people, people kill people! Thank God the founding fathers made it exceedingly difficult to change the Constitution. Otherwise, the nanny-stateists would have their big erasers out "protecting" us from ourselves. Cho shouldn't have been able to get a gun with his history of mental illness. A prof/student with a gun could have stopped this very quickly...period. And just in case we were tired of Virginia Tech: turn on your TVs. NASA evacuated a building at the Johnson Space Center in Houston after a person with a gun was seen and a shot was fired, a NASA spokeswoman said Friday. Brandi Dean said it was not yet known if anyone was hurt. Local police were on the scene, she said. NASA spokesperson, James Hartfield, told CNN there were gunshots heard in the building. But no.. some damned piece of paper written by people who lived in a very different world long ago said you should all be able to "bare arms".. so that means you should be able to carry a concealed Glock...I think that means we can all go sleeveless.  You know, this would be a great time for Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie to get married, while everyone's distracted. We now return you to regular programming. even better if they split up! To me, the question is, would I rather live in a town full of guns, orya think ? Yeah, I saw that story. No way in hell i would want to live in a town that saw fit to mandate that i own a deadly weapon. No way in hell. That's not civilization, as far as I'm concerned. Suit yourself, though. Different strokes and all that. I wonder whether some of this man's rants were actually listened to.... talking about Mercedes, gold chains and designer drinks. Did he feel alienated from the general academic population? Were his class mates cruel to him? Did he feel he was not accepted? There is a lot of pain in his tirades. Should the students have been gentler with him, and others like him. The Columbine massacre seemed to have some of the same issues, with boys that 'don't fit'. I am an oldish granny from Australia, but I find this discussion interesting. Being kind to your fellow students would be a very positive thing to do. It is so simple to do, and makes you feel good. And. it would seem, create a safer environment. Amen to that. I see! A city that has an exceptionally high crime rate is civilization? A city that mandates guns and decreased the crime rate to almost nonexistent is not civilization. Is suggesting blame on those that may have not "listened" to the killers "rants" civilized ? I understand the feel-good nature of the comment and agree it should be the general practice of everyone to care for our fellow man. However, after a guy murders 33 people, that question is highly inappropriate. just an aside. There was a time in America when every home had guns. Murder was much more rare then. So was crime for that matter. "Civilization" means low crime, respect for law, and the non-necessity of ordinary citizens arming themselves just in order to feel safe. I suppose I'd marginally prefer a heavily-armed community where crime was low to a less-armed community where crime was higher, but I don't think I'd feel that much safer in the former. My point is that if ordinary people have to own or carry guns just in order to guarantee their own safety, that's only slightly better than anarchy, as far as I'm concerned. Re your historical point, I know this is a well-loved image among gun enthusiasts, but historical evidence -- both on gun ownership and on crime rates -- is quite ambiguous, at least in my understanding. In my opinion it appears you often confuse ideals with facts. I do not think that is bad and shows the nature your heart, but it seems to cause you to miss the point. Civilization is an ideal man will never reach. We are bound to the realities of our nature and subjects to our cultures. The right to defend oneself recognizes this fact. Of course there are ideals, but the question is, are our actions taking us closer to or further from those ideals? To me, the knee-jerk reaction that just says, in response to this catastrophe, "More guns! Just give everyone a gun! A teacher with a pistol could have taken that bastard out in thirty seconds!" is essentially a way of subtly giving up on the idea of a decent, civilized community. I do not mean to put words in your mouth. I fully admit this is a reasoned conclusion and not factual. It appears you see the right to have guns, and the widespread possession of them to be inconsistent with the pursuit of the ideal of civilization. I do not. "Inconsistent" is putting it a little strongly, but in general, I think a society in which fewer members feel it necessary to arm themselves is a more civilized place than a society in which more do. Maybe I'm tainted by living outside the U.S. for a couple of years when I was younger. I think a society in which fewer members feel it necessary to armMaybe true. However, where do thes places exist? Keep in mind oppresive gun laws do not equal societies where fewer members feel it is necessary to arm themselves. Would our governnent be more oppressive or less oppressive during it's entire history without this right? Personally, my experience living in Germany for several years suggests that such places are not all that rare. Not that I'd prefer life in Germany overall, but it's certainly not the case that some progress in this direction is inconceivable. Worldwide, it's fairly widespread in fact. My impression is that international reactions to the VT events in the rest of the industrialized, developed world have focused on the (to them) inconceivable and irrational ease with which a psychopath could get a deadly weapon. When it comes to resisting government tyranny, I agree in principle, but realistically, no amount of firearms in private citizens' homes is going to stop the US government if t... Things today are not the same as they were in the eighteenth century.Using that line of reasoning, colonists should have never fought for "independence". The British had warships, heavy guns, a well trained army, massive funding, etc. A citizen militia with small arms could seize many of the items you listed. Do you think all in the military would go along with a coup or some similar scenario...hardly. The Afghan's defeat of the Soviet Union is a good example of how a "well armed militia" allowed David to slay Goliath. All of this assumes that you have a... When it comes to resisting government tyranny, I agree in principle,Enbar, I believe an armed citizenry is more influential than you give credit. Whatever you say about a tyrannical government oppression being unlikely or unstoppable, I disagree wholeheartedly. Just look what a few notjob terrorists can do in Iraq. Now imagine 50 to 100 million mad as hell Americans fighting to keep their liberty. The great thing about our system of government is it is replete with checks and balances. The right to possess firearms is th... Hm. Maybe you two are right. Now imagine 50 to 100 million mad as hell Americans fighting to keep their liberty.Then imagine 50-100 million Americans fighting them in defense of the party in power... If 50-100 million were defending the party in power then there would be no revolution. Right cdzr, I left it alone. TCW needs time to figure it out on her own. The fact is throughout recent history it has been the most oppressive regimes that have first sought to disarm the citizenry. The party that supports an armed citizenry is the one to be least feared. The party that does not support this right is a party bent on tyranny. To those with faculty of reason this can be easily observed in own present day. His own  hehe..If 50-100 million were defending the party in power then there would be no revolution.Explain the American revolution then... If I'm right it was two sides (north & south ) that did not agree... If that were to happen today & all those 100-200m Americans were armed.. it would be a literal blood bath... Which is what I was getting at... if you had millions against the government who were willing to raise their arms against them, and you had millions who were ready to defend the government, ad raise their arms against the revolter's... run with it.. I'm sure you have imagination to figure out what that means... If this happened in Canada, there would ... Um...the American Revolution was about colonists from England who settled in the 'New World' (North America) who were opposed to non religious freedoms, taxation without representation and a host of other issues that were BS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution The 'war' you are referring to is the Civil War, where the north and south battled each other largely over an argument to slavery and the right to secession. The south lost, and slavery was abolished. Now they call it 'Employment'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War right. oops.. anyway.. i think i made my point (well.. besides that i need a refresher on American history..) TCW, Yes you made your point, but not for the side of the debate you intended. Right.. cause you say so :| The fact I say so has nothing to do with the fact that I am right. right the "fact" wrong neener, neener, neener so now you are saying you are wrong? man.. amke up your mind! |
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