Oh god, please, don't let's encourage the eager discussion of how in Year 457 of the Third Age in the land of Gor, one of Conan's generals defeated an entire army with a morningstar and two-headed axe, so gun control is irrational.
No such discussion should be permitted unless and until proto-überGorden arrives to moderate it.
HARDY HAR. The land of Gor is FICTIONAL. The Conan however is rumored to have existed; I wasn't in the area at the time. The people of Búri certainly had a strong war culture. I never met any of his generals; this could be a reference to the commander of the Black Dragon elite guard Pallantides, but more likely the Poitainian general Prospero, who served Conan while he briefly reigned as King of Aquilonia. AND YES I KNOW people say Aquilonia did not exist. WHATEVS. The Romans didn't know the Cimbri or the Teutoni existed until they started fucking their shit up; the west didn't know of Genghis Khan's general Subutai until he cut a swath through the Kievan Rus. Plenty of kingdoms were ground to dust and lost to the historical record.
ANYWAY. Here's the dealio, straight from a very cut and ripped immortal warrior. Please let me know if you are confused by my URBAN LINGO, I am learning how to be more street, I've been watching a lot of reruns of The Jersey Shore.
The issue is range and power. One could conceivably kill lots of people with melee weapons in this modern age, but there is much greater limit.
It's just a argument for the dumbs. There's a way to reduce the number of deads when a person gets to the point inside their head that the way to solve the problem is to kill lots of other people and themselves. Make them do more work. Guns are designed to make killing people easy. Close up. Or at a distance. Make guns harder to get.
When people start arguing about the guy in China who killed a bunch of kids with a machete- sure. There are other ways to kill lots of people. But it is harder. Slower. Less likely to work. And the guy in China couldn't kill teachers through closed doors with his machete. Anders Breivik with a machete couldn't go to an island camp for teens in Norway and kill 76. Just not possible.
Help people struggling with the demons of their minds, and you solve a lot of this. You can't always. But in a land of disconnected people who feel powerless in their daily lives and are emotionally stunted, mental illness can be dangerous. Too many stories and fantasies in this country are about violent revenge as problem solving. It is the fantasy of the teenage boy mind.
Now this immortal warrior is depressed, and is going to the gym.
__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's a sense of entitlement involved. Like, maybe, some whiny little shit feels like he's not getting the attention he deserves for whatever reason, so he takes out his violent tendencies in a way that's likely to get him the most possible attention.
I get what you're saying, but I think you might be oversimplifying it. Being spoiled and angry at the world may be a necessary condition of murdering a classroom full of kindergarteners, but it's not a sufficient condition.
Something really, really wrong has to be going on in your brain to do what he did.
I get mad at my wife sometimes, but I'm not going to dismember her and hide her in the freezer. There's something in my brain that knows such things are very very wrong, and whatever that piece is was missing from his brain.
Whatever that thing is, it's the difference between having a violent fantasy and actually carrying it out. Thankfully, the overwhelming majority of socially awkward middle class boys have it, but for the ones that don't, we get the unexplainable.
It's probably some sort of repressed gene. Like the one for basketball, dance, or penis size. Every once and a while a white guy gets it, but it skips around a lot.
__________________
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for the night. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say there's a sense of entitlement involved. Like, maybe, some whiny little shit feels like he's not getting the attention he deserves for whatever reason, so he takes out his violent tendencies in a way that's likely to get him the most possible attention.
I get what you're saying, but I think you might be oversimplifying it. Being spoiled and angry at the world may be a necessary condition of murdering a classroom full of kindergarteners, but it's not a sufficient condition.
Something really, really wrong has to be going on in your brain to do what he did.
I get mad at my wife sometimes, but I'm not going to dismember her and hide her in the freezer. There's something in my brain that knows such things are very very wrong, and whatever that piece is was missing from his brain.
Whatever that thing is, it's the difference between having a violent fantasy and actually carrying it out. Thankfully, the overwhelming majority of socially awkward middle class boys have it, but for the ones that don't, we get the unexplainable.
That is such a strange interpretation of what I said that I'm not even sure what you're responding to.
You said: "You don't murder a bunch of Kindergarteners because you hate Kindergarteners. You murder a bunch of Kindergarteners because you know it's going to get you a whole lot of attention, and because it makes the world, which you are very angry with, freak out. And it works."
I'm saying yeah, the shock value is a factor, but you don't murder a bunch of Kindergarteners unless all of the above + you are seriously fucked in the head, and it's that last factor that is most important.
I think most serial killers and mass murders are white middle class because it's the only place you can fly under the radar and cutivate that sort of activity.
Think of how difficult it would be to remain an uncaught serial killer. You'd need decent steady employment with some free time, the ability to move around without suspicion in your neighborhood or city, a home with a garage to drive up into after dark, etc. No driving while black random stops, etc.
To be a mass murderer you need access to guns, money and time to learn to shoot properly, etc., etc. The stuff ain't cheap. Most people who steal and gun and try it cold can only get a couple people.
Most minorities would already be in prison by the time they got to the point of being able to carry out these sort of crimes. There are probably some gang members that could qualify as serial killers, but they are straight forward with it and are much more likely to get caught.
With a white guy you find they almost always are someone who kept to themselves, didn't bother other people, seemed like a nice guy, i.e. generic backround guy. Black guy keeping to himself, having different and strange friends over (later freezer material), driving through the neighborhood at odd hours, carrying around guns and going to the gun range, just trips more people's triggers.
There may be some generalizations in this post.
__________________
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for the night. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm the rest of his life.
While often ignored more people are starting to talk about the main component in most mass murders, Men. Beyond mental illness it seems to be the one similarity that is so skewed to one side there's no way it can be ignored, unless some of these same men are in power. There seems to be a heavy genetic component to many mental illnesses that impacts XY worse or in a different way than XX. I do wonder if certain violent behavior should be classified separately from other mental illnesses, as there are plenty of non-violent women and men with mental illnesses and some people that get violent at the drop of a hat.
It's not just men. It's overwhelmingly middle class white men who commit mass murders, which seems to indicate that there's a big cultural factor to it.
I'm not disagreeing with the statistical claim, but I'm not sure if this case fits in with trend. What's middle-class in America? From what I read, the mother was getting quarter of a million a year in payments from her ex-husband (who himself was earning a salary in the region of a million). I wouldn't call that middle-class by a long way.
__________________ The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. -Eugene Wigner
Oh god, please, don't let's encourage the eager discussion of how in Year 457 of the Third Age in the land of Gor, one of Conan's generals defeated an entire army with a morningstar and two-headed axe, so gun control is irrational.
I hope everyone can see how you've substituted a fake reductio ad absurdum for Kashmir's valid counter argument ...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kashmir
Quote:
Originally Posted by Gonzo
You can't kill 27 people with an axe or a knife, try to be a little more realistic.
You can't kill 27 people with an axe or a knife, try to be a little more realistic.
Give me a big enough knife and a place to stand and I can kill 27 people. Archimedes the Maniac
__________________ Old Pain In The Ass says: I am on a mission from God to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable; to bring faith to the doubtful and doubt to the faithful.
I think most serial killers and mass murders are white middle class because it's the only place you can fly under the radar and cutivate that sort of activity.
Mass murders are a pretty distinct class of crime from other types of murder, even serial killings. A primary goal is to get attention, rather than for the normal killing reasons, like passion or money. Mass murders are big, public events that the killer likely doesn't expect to walk away from. They're designed to get the general public to pay attention to the killer, often posthumously.
There isn't even some clear previous law breaking history associated with that, and many mass murderers are very young, so their big statement killing could well be the first time they've even committed a serious crime.
I should probably say that I'm not just pulling that stuff about the profile out of my ass. I used to review true crime books, so I had to read about five books a month, mostly about murder and most of those in part or whole about criminal profiling of murderers, and that was a consensus from IIRC every single one I read that discussed mass murderers--they're relatively privileged white guys, and their motivations are very different from the motivations of killers who just murder people individually. A big part of the difference is that they kill people in large part to get attention, whereas other types of murderer generally prefer to get away with it.
Oh god, please, don't let's encourage the eager discussion of how in Year 457 of the Third Age in the land of Gor, one of Conan's generals defeated an entire army with a morningstar and two-headed axe, so gun control is irrational.
If you think I don't support some gun control, you are laughably mistaken. I won't swallow the Kool-Aid of either end.
Also, nice fantasy strawman.
I just find it bizarre in the extreme how other liberals can hate and demonize guns so much, when comparable death tolls have been achieved without them.
Or how they forget that in the past the weak have been kept weak by forbidding them more capable weapons-- Eastern martial artists didn't use sickles, and trowels, and sticks because they're uber weapons, that's all they could get away with under the warlords or other powers that forbid them arms.
Aren't liberals supposed to care about the weak?
The Arab Spring, where unjust dictators have been overthrown, guess what the rebels used? That's right, guns. Let's restrict the franchise, keep populations unarmed, eh?
Or think of the world of V for Vendetta. Fiction, yes, but possible. If England ever did go fascist in real life, the population is pretty well fucked. Gandhi only works sometimes.
I don't see how fast they accomplished their deranged goal has much bearing. Is it worse for a murderer to kill thirty people in a few minutes, versus an hour or more?
Why does the venue of the murders matter (I noted the restrictions before I linked it, by the way), like this is an argument against those facts? Why aren't they relevant in your mind?
Just don't show me the pictures of the children till you are prepaired to say what can be done to prevent these kind of things from happening. And don't say something stupid like 'more gun control'. Not too many years ago the executive branch ordered law inforcment to not prosecute weapons offences in order to push more and stricter gun control. There are plenty of laws on the books as it is, just enforce what is there.
Some time ago there was a flood in Australia, and one of the stories was about a young boy, his younger brother and mother being swept away in the flood, and when a rescue worker tried to grab them the boy pushed his younger brother and said "save him instead" while he and his mother were swept away to die. They posted his picture and it was a long time till I could get that image out of my head. Show me what can be done and that will be the best way to honor the dead.
i'm all for gun control, but i don't think that's the problem in america. you're just fucking crazy. seriously. all of you. you're nuts. you scare the fucking shit out of me.
i think we should go back to swords and spears, when anybody near a tree had a weapon.
Give me a big enough knife and a place to stand and I can kill 27 people. Archimedes the Maniac
.................................
__________________
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
Not too many years ago the executive branch ordered law inforcment to not prosecute weapons offences in order to push more and stricter gun control. There are plenty of laws on the books as it is, just enforce what is there.
you have created a culture that is entertained by crime scenes.
that's pretty fucked up.
Years ago, I heard a comedian say something to the effect of: "We live in a society where showing a representation of somebody getting murdered is 'good clean family entertainment' that's suitable for the Family Hour. But to show two people physically expressing their love for each other is obscene. Those are some seriously screwed-up priorities."
I'm rather inclined to agree, actually.
__________________
“The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.”
Governments were formed in large part to do for the people what they could not do for themselves. In the realm of public safety, police departments and fire departments were formed. In the case of protecting children who are required to attend school, our society has not done what is necessary. I believe that the only way we can be confident that our schools are safe is to assign a well-trained, well-equipped law enforcement officer to each school. One officer may not be enough to neutralize an attacker, but he or she has a much better chance of doing that than does a principal, teacher, or custodian who stands unarmed between the terrorist and our children.
Some may react and suggest that the schools need to provide security guards. I would submit that if a school building burned somewhere causing loss of life, schools would not be expected to build a fire station and train firemen. Government would do what is necessary to improve fire safety. We have an outstanding Sheriff and a Sheriff’s Office that is the appropriate agency to provide the additional safety. That proposed increase in staffing and the associated costs need to be provided by local government as a cost of keeping us safe. That is its job. There is no higher need.
I estimate that it will cost our county $3.5 million annually, or 66 cents per day per child, to hire, train, and equip a law enforcement officer for each of our schools. It is my opinion that spending such a small amount to assure safety is a good investment on our government’s part, and that such an investment should take precedence over infrastructure costs, etc.
You don't murder a bunch of Kindergarteners because you hate Kindergarteners.
How do you figure that?
Quote:
You murder a bunch of Kindergarteners because you know it's going to get you a whole lot of attention, and because it makes the world, which you are very angry with, freak out. And it works.
He didn't shoot his mother in the head 4 times to get any of that done.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Waluigi
Something really, really wrong has to be going on in your brain to do what he did.
I get mad at my wife sometimes, but I'm not going to dismember her and hide her in the freezer. There's something in my brain that knows such things are very very wrong, and whatever that piece is was missing from his brain.
Setting aside the chimerical notion of conscience as a biochemical phenomenon, it's not that there was any information missing, but that it was effectively inaccesible by virtue of his overwhelming hatred.
Re: Another Mass Shooting
legal scholar itt
Linear Mode
