School shooting reported at a Community College in Oregon

[Joun_Lord]

A "witch hunt" implies going after people who are innocent/persecuting people unfairly, at least to me. I'm talking about arresting people if they were advocating mass murder, which is and bloody well should be illegal, regardless of weather the shooter would have committed murder anyway.

And don't give me this slippery slope horse fuckery. While I suppose their could be posts that are ambiguous, their is no right to explicitly advocate murder, nor should their be. It does not require "...severely limiting peoples free speech rights." to not allow that.

I doubt you'll find a person on this forum who is a stronger supporter of the First Amendment than I am. I don't support hate speech bans. I even have ethical misgivings about being able to sue people for slander sometimes. But their is a line, and this is about as basic and essential a limit as you can get.

Also, its not about "...blame everyone else...", at least not for me, and I'll thank you not to make false assumptions about my motives. Its about enforcing the fucking law.

And inadvertently my ass. What, did the posters accidentally support mass murder? I don't give a shit if they didn't take it seriously- their are some things you should always take seriously, and this is one of them.

If they actually knew it was real, I'd agree they'd be guilty. But again, 4chan where everything is all jokes and fake shit. As I pointed out this shit has happened before and right alongside shit like loch ness monsters and pedobears. Its just this time it turned out to be real.

People were not advocating murder, they were posting in what they thought was a joke thread with the FBI and the hacker known as 4channel in it. A thread people even acknowledge these type threads have happened alot and always were bullshit.

And this is blaming everyone else, I need not make assumption of your motives, that is a fact. These idiots, whether or not they were in the wrong for posting crap in what they reasonably thought was yet another troll thread, did not kill anyone. They did not force the shooter to kill anyone. Their encouragement did not send him over the edge, anyone willing to go commit mass murder is already long since gone. They are idiots maybe but they are not to blame.

Troll threads about mass shootings that have always turned out to be bullshit except this one time should be always taken seriously? Are you freaking kidding me, you think anytime someone with too much time on their hands and not enough brain cells makes something like this the FBI needs called? The thread I linked mentioned there has been possibly hundreds of "watch the news" threads akin to this. All of them you wanted to be taken seriously despite that fact that only one ever turned out to be true?

Should someone call the FBI next time someone makes a thread about a anthropomorphic bear who plans to kidnap Dakota Fanning or a bunch of camo clad morons who plan to invade Zimbabwe and restore Rhodesia and get Mugabe's collection of lost Doctor Who? Because until yesterday they were as much a reality as the mass shooting threads.

You know what would happen on this board if someone went into OT and started talking about their plan to shoot up a university campus?

The post would be reported 80 times, and Dalton would contact the authorities with the IP address of the individual, their email address, and screen shots.

Depending on jurisdiction, there are crimes that the site admins could be charged with, and possibly even the individual posters.

Unlike 4chan, thankfully, this site isn't some anything goes shithole that has a history of such things happening on a regular basis. Unlike 4chan this isn't some site where everything is all jokes and trolling. The closest thing to 4chan here was testing and that was thoroughly reviled and I'm relatively sure no one there ever advocating committing violence in jest even when that area was given the most latitude.

4chan is a very not serious site. Most of the content is I guess like Batman here posting in character, with no offense meant towards Batman by comparing him to those fucks. He acts like he really is Bruce Wayne but nobody actually believe he really is (or I hope not). Its fake, its a character, much like most of the stuff on 4chan. He's no more actually Batman then the people who say they are Chris Hansen on 4chan are.

That does not discharge ethical and legal obligations.

What legal or ethical obligations does one have to what as far as they know is a very poor taste joke that has been done multiple times before with no connection to reality?

[salm]

Boiling this down to guns is silly. It is a lot more complex than guns.

I agree the worst school massacre had no guns involved. The Bath School Disaster of 1927 had 44 dead, 58 wounded and no guns. Instead he used homemade explosives. Also consider knowledge of bomb making back then was more scarce than ti is today with all info available on the internet. Hell I know a couple of students that I went to school with made nitro in their high school chem lab.

Go ahead ban guns people will still find a way.

I didn´t mean to say that it has nothing to do with guns at all. Just that it´s more complex than just guns. One example in which something different than guns was used doesn´t say anything about guns being problematic.
But besides guns there are a bunch of social issues like a bullying culture, preassure to conform to certain norms and things like that. A certain percentage of marginalized males will flip and then do it as publicly as possible knowing that they´ll get their 5 minutes of fame on sensationalistic for profit news channels.
Guns are obviously a factor as well. Shootings rely on the availability of guns after all.
Simply banning them wouldn´t do much good, though. If anything the US has to get rid of the exessive amount of guns floating around. But I doubt this can be done by making certain guns illegal. Esspecially not in an environment as the US. Actaully I doubt it can be done at all as gun ownership is too ingrained into the US society. It would be like getting rid of mosques in Mecca.

It´s been said before, we´ll just have to live with school attacks. It´s not like they´re a major problem anyway. They are just easily marketable by news media and understandably get the emotions high.

The best thing would be to ignore them completely or just report about them like another traffic accident in order to drain the shooters of their "fame". Of course this won´t happen.

[AniThyng]

Sounds like one of those things that would be hard to prove before the fact.

Not really. There is plenty of just months old news articles of moot announcing his retirement. Just go do a google search for "moot steps down" and you will find a whole bunch of articles from January of this year speaking about moot getting the fuck out of 4chan along with plenty of other articles blaming that ass-pimple Gamergate and quite a few calling moot a cuck who was brainwashed by Gawker.

Uh no I was referring to knowing the posts were actual intent to commit a mass shooting as opposed to being a troll...

But evidently others disagree. I'm still not entirely sure there is a line where we can say something merits investigation and something is fantasizing...

[Joun_Lord]

Uh no I was referring to knowing the posts were actual intent to commit a mass shooting as opposed to being a troll...

But evidently others disagree. I'm still not entirely sure there is a line where we can say something merits investigation and something is fantasizing...

Oh, I thought you were meaning about moot stepping down. My bad.

[Grumman]

Justin Carter's case also comes to mind. On one hand, you have the possibility that the person posting shit on the den of trolls really is a budding murderer. On the other, you have a legal system that will put you in jail for years for sarcasm if you can't make a half million dollar bail. If you want people be more willing to report others on suspicion that they're not just taking the piss, they need to trust that they haven't fucked up an innocent man's life if they are mistaken.

[Crazedwraith]

Boiling this down to guns is silly. It is a lot more complex than guns.

I agree the worst school massacre had no guns involved. The Bath School Disaster of 1927 had 44 dead, 58 wounded and no guns. Instead he used homemade explosives. Also consider knowledge of bomb making back then was more scarce than ti is today with all info available on the internet. Hell I know a couple of students that I went to school with made nitro in their high school chem lab.

Go ahead ban guns people will still find a way.

I also agree with Salm. To say this is only about guns is silly. It seems equally silly to me to claim that gun control has no part to play in the solution.

It always seems to be an either or issue for people. Either gun control or tackling deeper issues. I don't know why you can't have both. Gun control to help in the short term. (a person without a gun cannot shoot anyone) and better care of mental health issues/social injustice etc in the long term.

Yes, you can still kill people without guns. But it's not as easy. I imagine that people are far less able to successfully build and use bombs for example than they are just to buy a gun and shoot.

[Agent Fisher]

He was encouraged, because 4Chan.

I'm not gonna say he wasn't encouraged by 4Chan, but come on, let's be honest. The biggest factor, in my opinion, that contributes to these mass shootings is the fucking news media. We'll know this fucker's name. His reasons. His grievances. They'll be playing ominous music when they talk about this shooting, they'll have those blurry, out of focus background shots of someone in tactical gear walking. They'll make this shit a fucking anti-hero. That's the biggest contributor. Forget gun control, forget mental health, well, I mean, don't forget them, I'm sure those are discussions worth having, but why don't we talk about how the news media responds and makes these guys so important that some twisted kid sees the response and thinks 'That's what I'll do, that's how I'll be famous.'

[TheFeniX]

I'm not gonna say he wasn't encouraged by 4Chan, but come on, let's be honest. The biggest factor, in my opinion, that contributes to these mass shootings is the fucking news media. We'll know this fucker's name. His reasons. His grievances. They'll be playing ominous music when they talk about this shooting, they'll have those blurry, out of focus background shots of someone in tactical gear walking. They'll make this shit a fucking anti-hero. That's the biggest contributor. Forget gun control, forget mental health, well, I mean, don't forget them, I'm sure those are discussions worth having, but why don't we talk about how the news media responds and makes these guys so important that some twisted kid sees the response and thinks 'That's what I'll do, that's how I'll be famous.'

Aren't there a few European countries were they aren't allowed to report on the details on the murderer, only the victims? I'd be more than open to that at this point.

The news media, like you said, picks through every little detail of the murderer's life, every little thing becomes super-huge important. My first exposure to this was Columbine and the coverage was telling and it hasn't gotten any better. The victims were mostly forgotten, only referenced into (maybe) their relationship to the shooters. About how they could have tried harder to be friends, etc. And even then, the actual truth of what those two psychos were about didn't interest the media because they were too busy finding a way to hook it into bullying and video games. Jesus, they treated the bombs (part of the original plan) like an after-thought even though the death-toll would have been 10 times higher had they built them correctly.

That has to be catnip to a person who feels their life doesn't matter or that's they're just one more faceless person in the crowd and is desperate for attention. Knowing "all" you have to do to immortalize yourself is attack a place traditionally assumed to be safe has to be a powerful motivator when you've finally hit rock bottom.

[Dominus Atheos]

The Onion has a tradition where they post this story every time there is a mass shooting, just slightly updated for the new event:

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

ROSEBURG, OR—In the hours following a violent rampage in southwestern Oregon in which a lone attacker killed 10 individuals and seriously injured seven others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Thursday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Ohio resident Lindsay Bennett, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past six years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way- ... y-ha-51444

They also posted it after the Charleston church shootings:

No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

June 17, 2015

CHARLESTON, SC—In the hours following a violent rampage in downtown Charleston in which a lone attacker killed nine individuals and seriously injured one other, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Wednesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place...

http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way- ... y-ha-51443

And the UCSB shootings\stabbings:

‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens

May 27, 2014

ISLA VISTA, CA—In the days following a violent rampage in southern California in which a lone attacker killed seven individuals, including himself, and seriously injured over a dozen others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place...

http://www.theonion.com/article/no-way- ... this-36131

[Ziggy Stardust]

I also agree with Salm. To say this is only about guns is silly. It seems equally silly to me to claim that gun control has no part to play in the solution.

It always seems to be an either or issue for people. Either gun control or tackling deeper issues. I don't know why you can't have both. Gun control to help in the short term. (a person without a gun cannot shoot anyone) and better care of mental health issues/social injustice etc in the long term.

Yes, you can still kill people without guns. But it's not as easy. I imagine that people are far less able to successfully build and use bombs for example than they are just to buy a gun and shoot.

This.

This is exactly what drives me crazy about the anti-gun-control crowd in general. They routinely dismiss the issue of gun control by pointing at these other issues, as if they weren't intrinsically interrelated and that dealing with them isn't mutually exclusive. Yes, the deadliest school attack was made with a homemade bomb ... which is exactly why bomb-making materials are heavily controlled and monitored, and why mass bombings are pretty infrequent in this country. Pointing to the bomb examples, if anything, is an example of why there should be tighter gun control!

(Since I know this statement is going to invite a lot of vitriol, let me a priori clarify some things so I don't have to deal with the inevitable strawmen a few posts from now: I'm not saying that the pro-gun-control side of the argument doesn't have its share of morons and trolls and irrational arguments, as well. It is just that, at least in my personal experience on these forums and social media, it's the anti-gun-control group that tends to be the most disingenuous about things, by moving the goalposts and trying to distract attention. I'm also not saying that all guns should be banned, full stop, or that gun control is the one and only solution to these problems. I am not even making an argument about gun control at all, here, I am only making a statement about the specific and frustratingly dishonest type of anti-gun-control argument that always pops up in these threads. I hate that I have to so overly clarify my position, but unfortunately this is an issue that gets so heated I am forced to.)

[Simon_Jester]

Thing is, some of these other countries where school shootings don't happen are also countries where gun ownership is fairly common.

I think what we're seeing here is an interaction between three factors:
1) Gun ownership,
2) Singularly crappy treatment of the mentally ill including nontreatment and a lack of resources for identifying individuals who pose a threat and getting them psychiatric care, and
3) Media lionization of the shooter.

That's a bad combination. Guns provide the means, the media provides the motive, and the large number of dangerously insane people mean there's always someone with an opportunity.

Clamping down on one of these factors while ignoring the others is unlikely to work. A successful plan (and we need a plan, because we've had hundreds if not more killed by these random mass murders) will have to attack all three.

[B5B7]

There is another unique American factor - in other nations guns are treated like tools, but in USA they are worshiped and guns themselves are considered to have rights. So whereas in other nations that might consider themselves nominally Christian, the Christians worship a holy trinity, in US is holy foursome - the father, the two sons - Jesus and Guns, and the holy spirit.

[Broomstick]

The stereotype is a distortion of a position even most Americans would consider extreme.

Also, not all of us are Christians. It's just the damn Jesus freaks are so fucking loud...!

[Joun_Lord]

There is another unique American factor - in other nations guns are treated like tools, but in USA they are worshiped and guns themselves are considered to have rights. So whereas in other nations that might consider themselves nominally Christian, the Christians worship a holy trinity, in US is holy foursome - the father, the two sons - Jesus and Guns, and the holy spirit.

Yeah, no. While their might be some who would jack off to God, guns, and gold as the stereotype goes most Americans and gun owners don't feel that way. Most people consider them tools, unlike other nations who consider them untouchable despicable evil instruments of evil that no sane person should ever have except cops who would never ever abuse them (see stereotypes go both ways), or maybe "toys" depending on how they use them (toys as in they don't use them for anything except recreational purposes, don't use them for defense, competition, or hunting, just like taking to ranges and blasting stuff but don't misuse them).

Nobody worships them, maybe the Constitution that maybe guarantees the rights of Americans to own them, and nobody thinks guns themselves should have rights (though plenty feel guns should be respected heavily and antique or rare guns should be given special treatment). Some might think a weapon has a bit of a soul but people think that about swords and shit too.

And finally, not just Christians love guns and some Christians don't like guns at all. I'm pro-gun and as atheist as they come (heh I said come). There is unfortunately a religious component to the NRA and alot of crazy ass Christians do cling to firearms like a security blanket. However the NRA represents only a tiny portion of American gun owners and crazy ass Christians are a minority of gun owners and Christians alike. Like Broomstick said, they are loud and therefore get the most attention. Of course the media is going to focus on the clowns. But there are gay gun owners, atheist gun owners, Muslim gun owners, and maybe even one or two liberal guns owners.

Stop stereotyping brah, thats not PC brah, check your privilege brah.

[Ziggy Stardust]

While B5B7's statement is obviously hyperbolic, it is inarguable that the cultural attitudes towards guns in the United States is radically different than it is in just about any other country. It is precisely because of this cultural attitude that makes it so hard to come up with any sort of common sense approach to gun control; it is exactly what makes these debates so toxic.

[Broomstick]

It wasn't that it was hyperbolic, it was offensively so.

Yes, the US attitude towards guns is different from other nations. Yes, that is why the situation is fucked up and remains so. But attitudes towards guns leans much towards "tools" than "worship" for the vast majority.

[Channel72]

The reporting on this indicates the shooter was heavily armed, with lots of extra ammo. There's obviously a bug here when an obviously psychologically disturbed person can easily get access to all this.

Anyway, the opinion expressed by John Parker, some random guy who was carrying a concealed weapon close by when the shooting occurred, is worth reading, because it probably represents the attitude of a large percentage of Americans:

From http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/oregon ... ng-n437966

[John Parker], the 36-year-old Air Force veteran became the human face of the concealed carry debate by giving numerous network interviews Thursday in which he said that he had his handgun with him on campus that morning but was not in a position to use it — he was locked down in the school's veterans center several hundred yards away from the science hall where the shooting took place.

...

Parker says his right to carry a gun wherever he pleases derives not just from the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but from Article 1, Section 27, of the Oregon Constitution, which states, "The people shall have the right to bear arms for the defence of themselves, and the State, but the Military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power."

I think this guy's opinion more or less sums up what a lot of Americans feel. Many Americans have developed this "feel-good", irrational idea that walking around with a gun is somehow the ultimate expression of their civil freedom, and any attempt to curtail this freedom is tantamount to government tyranny. Of course, the idea that "the Military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power" is in any way enforceable via random citizens and their hand guns is just too hilarious to even address.

Of course, the really sad thing is that apart from these 15-20 victims who died in Oregon, another 90 people died all around the US from typical background gun violence:

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/oregon ... ce-n437791

Outside of Oregon, a Sadly Typical Day for U.S. Gun Violence

While the nation focused its grief on a mass shooting in Oregon on Thursday, gun violence was ripping apart dozens more lives across the country.

A 5-month-old girl was shot to death while riding in a car with her mother in Cleveland.

A man killed his wife and a good Samaritan, then turned his gun on himself in north Florida.

A security guard was killed, allegedly by a co-worker in Atlanta.

Teen-aged brothers were gunned down in broad daylight near a busy intersection in Fresno, California.

A suspect in a Georgia shooting killed himself after a three-county car chase.

The list of the Oct. 1 dead goes on and on: murders, suicides, workplace violence, domestic violence, street shootings and drive-by gunfire.

And there is nothing unusual about it.

The most recent data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2013 an average of 92 people died in the United States each day of firearm-related injuries. Homicides accounted for about a third of those deaths, suicides most of the rest. More than twice as many are shot but survive.

"This is happening every single day in forgotten neighborhoods around the country," President Barack Obama said at a White House press conference Friday. The previous evening, reeling from news of a gunman's killing of nine people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, Obama said the nation had become "numb" to gun violence.

NBC News tracked down cases of two-dozen people who died from gun-related injuries on Thursday, the same day as the rampage in Oregon. Their stories portray a tragic, but perhaps typical, day in America.

The victims included 5-month-old Aavielle Wakefield, who was riding in a car with her mother on Cleveland's east side Thursday night when a bullet — believed to have been shot from a nearby apartment building — tore into her chest.

Cops Get Emotional After Drive-By Shooting Kills Baby 1:50

She was the third fatal drive-by shooting of a child in the city in the past month, and her death nearly brought Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams to tears. "We will stay on this as long as it takes," he said. "We want bodies in jail tonight for this crime."

Williams said there were no leads yet in the investigation, in which prosecutors announced a $25,000 reward for information that leads to the killer's conviction.

That same night, in Inglis, Florida, Walter Tyson, 57, allegedly opened fire on the lawn of a home, hitting Otis Ray Bean, police said. Bean survived. A good Samaritan, 68-year-old Walter Scott Terhune, tried to intervene, and Tyson shot him to death before entering the house and killing his wife, Patricia Tyson. Then the gunman shot himself.

Much earlier, during the morning shift at the Peachtree Tower apartments in the upscale Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, security guard Emmanuel Nwankwo, 23, was shot to death in the lobby. A fellow guard, 26-year-old Dexter Harper, was charged in the 5 a.m. killing.

Later that morning, in Forsyth, Georgia, police found a man bleeding from several gunshot wounds. They chased the alleged shooter, Milton Terry Bowden, through three counties before forcing his car off the road. Officers then heard a single gunshot; Bowden had committed suicide.

Around that time in Fresno, California, a shootout erupted in a busy intersection. Police arrived and found brothers Willie Ford, 19, and Denzel Ford, 18, dying from gunshot wounds. The motive, police said, was a falling out between the brothers and the 19-year-old gunman, who was arrested in a nearby apartment.

That's just a small cross-section of Thursday's destruction, which also included young men shot dead on streets in Miami, St. Louis and Baton Rouge, Louisiana; a Pittsburgh kidnapping suspect who turned his gun on himself as police closed in on him; a bar fight in Toledo, Ohio; a murder-suicide in Cincinnati; and a suicide at an upstate New York gun range.
James Carlini, a Pennsylvania kidnapping suspect who shot himself Thursday at police closed in on him. Allegheny County Police

On Friday, Williams, whose detectives are searching for whoever killed Aavielle Wakefield, urged the people of Cleveland to go beyond anti-violence marches and step forward to help find her killer, and those responsible for two recent drive-by shootings that claimed children's lives.

"It's hard to stomach that," Williams said of the deaths. "Because it's not for any reason that we can come up with. Not for any reason that any sensible person can come up with."

[Joun_Lord]

While B5B7's statement is obviously hyperbolic, it is inarguable that the cultural attitudes towards guns in the United States is radically different than it is in just about any other country. It is precisely because of this cultural attitude that makes it so hard to come up with any sort of common sense approach to gun control; it is exactly what makes these debates so toxic.

Without condemning or condoning it, it is different. To my knowledge no other country (atleast probably no other 1st world country) has the right to arm bears built right into its constitution or equivalent. Firearm ownership is seen as an inalienable right in this hizzle whereas in even countries with more liberal attitudes towards gun ownership its saw as a privilege that one much of the time must earn and can be taken away if others misuse it. That to some seems an alien attitude, equivalent to free speech being a privilege one must earn and can have it removed because others abuse it.

Firearms helped create the nation and are intertwined with its history. Hunting in the great outdoors is something alot of Americans can and do do, whereas hunting doesn't seem that popular in the great nation of Eurocommieland either because of lack of firearms to hunt with, lack of areas to show animals your the king of the food chain, or because Euro types are girly men.

Because of those differences is easy to understand the attitudes Americans and Europeans or more generally pro and anti-gunners have towards firearms and the frustrations both sides have towards to the others attitudes.

Beyond all that mumble jumble, its hard to come up with common sense gun control because its impossible for the sides to agree what is common sense gun control because their viewpoints are so far removed from each other. Some pro-gunners see sensible gun control as what it is now, machine guns heavily regulated and rarely ever actually used for violence, waiting periods on handguns, and reasonable background checks without stupidly high fees for anything. Others see any gun control as senseless. Still others might see banning all the scary "assault weapons" and only allowing hunting weapons because clearly the 2nd says the right to go huntin' as sensible. Some anti-gunners might see universal background checks, limits of buying, "clip" size limits, "assault weapon" bans, and a national register to be reasonable. Others might see banning anything but inoffensive looking single shot hunting weapons to be sensible level of control. Still others say everything should be banned including airsoft guns because you can convert them into real guns supposedly and thats common sense.

You can't even get people to agree on the same side. Good luck getting opposing sides to come to an accord.

[Grumman]

The most recent data from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2013 an average of 92 people died in the United States each day of firearm-related injuries. Homicides accounted for about a third of those deaths, suicides most of the rest. More than twice as many are shot but survive.

Suicides should be irrelevant to the debate. Our rights should not be brought down to the lowest common denominator - that a small minority of the population has an irrational desire to destroy themselves is not a reason to curtail all our rights as if we were equally mentally ill.

[Metahive]

Suicides are absolutely relevant to the gun control debate because they represent one of the easiest and quickest means for people to kill themselves. Most of the others, be it rope, poison or jumpig from great heights require more time and effort and therefore give the suicidal person more time to think about his/her actions and yes, that can discourage people from taking the ultimate step.

Some more info on the matter:
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/magazi ... d-suicide/

[B5B7]

While B5B7's statement is obviously hyperbolic, it is inarguable that the cultural attitudes towards guns in the United States is radically different than it is in just about any other country. It is precisely because of this cultural attitude that makes it so hard to come up with any sort of common sense approach to gun control; it is exactly what makes these debates so toxic.

Yes, you understand what I was saying. I was not literally saying that gun ownership = Christian, but that the attitude that underlies fundamentalist Christianity is the same that many gun owners have.
They of course say that their constitution supports right to virtually unlimited gun ownership (based on a weird interpretation made by the US Supreme Court), but I have seen some in forums refer to gun ownership as a human right, not simply a constitutional/legal right.

[Zwinmar]

Here, Kansas, anyone who isn't a felon may conceal carry without a license. Needless to say, I don't, at least until I go up and get he paper work for what my responsibilities are first.

I think, at a minimum, if someone wants to carry a gun they need to be trained in its use. Just like to go hunting you have to have a hunter's safety course.

[Adam Reynolds]

It wasn't that it was hyperbolic, it was offensively so.

Yes, the US attitude towards guns is different from other nations. Yes, that is why the situation is fucked up and remains so. But attitudes towards guns leans much towards "tools" than "worship" for the vast majority.

I would say that it is more toy than tool. The majority of civilian gun owners don't really consider them weapons for self defense or tools for hunting as a survival mechanism. They consider them a shiny new toy to play with. And that is why there is a sense of entitlement. People are bothered by the idea of their toys being taken away and so they throw temper tantrums like children*. This mentality is what really needs to be addressed with the issue of gun control.

*I'm not suggesting gun owners are particularirly more childish than average. The same phenomenon would be seen with most Americans if you suggested taking away another similar item that only really has value as a source of entertainment. Though no one is suggesting we ban televisions.

[Simon_Jester]

Anyway, the opinion expressed by John Parker, some random guy who was carrying a concealed weapon close by when the shooting occurred, is worth reading, because it probably represents the attitude of a large percentage of Americans:

From http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/oregon ... ng-n437966

[John Parker], the 36-year-old Air Force veteran became the human face of the concealed carry debate by giving numerous network interviews Thursday in which he said that he had his handgun with him on campus that morning but was not in a position to use it — he was locked down in the school's veterans center several hundred yards away from the science hall where the shooting took place...Parker says his right to carry a gun wherever he pleases derives not just from the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but from Article 1, Section 27, of the Oregon Constitution, which states, "The people shall have the right to bear arms for the defence of themselves, and the State, but the Military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power."

I think this guy's opinion more or less sums up what a lot of Americans feel. Many Americans have developed this "feel-good", irrational idea that walking around with a gun is somehow the ultimate expression of their civil freedom, and any attempt to curtail this freedom is tantamount to government tyranny. Of course, the idea that "the Military shall be kept in strict subordination to the civil power" is in any way enforceable via random citizens and their hand guns is just too hilarious to even address.

I don't believe you're reading that passage from the Oregon state constitution correctly.

It's not saying in any meaningful sense "citizens will keep the military in line with their handguns."

I think what it's saying is that the people have the right to bear arms to defend the state- but they are the ones being described as "in strict subordination to the civil power." In other words, a self-identified militia isn't above the law.

Alternatively, that's two separate statements that might reasonably pertain to organizations like a state militia, both in one clause- note that the "right to bear arms" and participation in a state militia were issues tied together in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Of course, the really sad thing is that apart from these 15-20 victims who died in Oregon, another 90 people died all around the US from typical background gun violence:

... Yes- although unless you fixed other things about the US, a lot of these people would have wound up dead from other weapons. Not all, far from all... but...

Hell, it was just last month that there was a murder in my parents' neighborhood involving a rolling pin. Untreated crazy people can be dangerous without guns. Brutalized people, people made brutal by the actions of other brutes, can be dangerous without guns.

This is why I keep saying that we have two or three separate issues that need to be tackled when it comes to mass shootings alone, and several others when it comes to shootings that are a result of overall, generalized crime.

Reducing access to guns is at most one facet of a complicated problem, and if done alone will have very limited effect.

[SVPD]

While B5B7's statement is obviously hyperbolic, it is inarguable that the cultural attitudes towards guns in the United States is radically different than it is in just about any other country. It is precisely because of this cultural attitude that makes it so hard to come up with any sort of common sense approach to gun control; it is exactly what makes these debates so toxic.

Yes, you understand what I was saying. I was not literally saying that gun ownership = Christian, but that the attitude that underlies fundamentalist Christianity is the same that many gun owners have.
They of course say that their constitution supports right to virtually unlimited gun ownership (based on a weird interpretation made by the US Supreme Court), but I have seen some in forums refer to gun ownership as a human right, not simply a constitutional/legal right.

In fact, its the reverse of what you stated. In the U.S., guns are very much regarded as tools, and people regard the idea that their access to them ought to be controlled as just as absurd as limiting access to cars, hammers, or computers - or at least that restrictions should be no more serious than those.

In many other Western countries, the gun is regarded as a "special" tool that only certain people should have access to, such as the military and the police or at least should only be accessed in very controlled circumstances.

It does not help that so many advocates for gun control regard gun control as the goal, rather than a solution to another problem. They identify a particular problem such as school shootings or whatever and then focus on gun control as necessarily the primary solution and pay lip service to other approaches. This is most obvious when you hear the term "common sense measures" that politicians love so much. It's a red bullshit flag any time its used because its a cute way of saying "we should adopt the solution I want because it intuitively seems like it should work" knowing all the while it's very hard to get rid of anything like that once its in place. Its a very cute way of asking the public to reject the need for research or careful consideration, and the public is often all too eager to do it because the press aids and abets this method by reducing everything to quick sound bites and reporters advocating knee-jerk reactions 15 minutes after a problem appears.

This is not to say that no gun control measure could ever be effective; it's that almost no pro-gun-control advocate ever appears that is not making it blatantly obvious that they want gun control at any cost, for its own sake. The gun-rights group has learned this, and therefore defends against any measure, no matter how minor because they know perfectly well that giving in on any point means acquiescing to the idea that gun control is an end rather than a means.