Another Movie Theatre Shooting

[EvilMonkey]

that's an impressive takedown of a straw man, well done!

2) for the "good guy" with a gun to screw up and do something stupid, irresponsible or malicious.

 

 

You just said it there yourself, the good guy will screw up and act like a criminal. No straw man needed, you provided the proof right there.

[Balta1701]

Reading through the comments one thing becomes clear. Most of the non gun owners believe that non criminals with guns will act like criminals with guns. Criminals do not follow the same laws as the rest of society. Some criminals have severe mental disease or defects. You also assume non criminal gun owners will do the stupidest possible thing. In the theater they will just stand up and start shooting in any random direction like some cartoon character. Remember these are really normal people. They are doctors, lawyers, professors, truck drivers, construction workers, secretaries, and from every walk of life and background. They don't suddenly veer their cars into traffic, they don't randomly start killing people. But somehow many of the people here suddenly think I'm as crazy as the criminal that is killing people. It just isn't so. There are millions and millions of very responsible gun owners who just would not do the things that some people here think they would.

 

Your caricatures would be laughable if they weren't so wrong.

Those doctors, lawyers, professors, truck drivers, construction workers, and secretaries also aren't likely to be extremely well trained at aiming firearms in a dark movie theater, yet we get presented the fantasy that they would be.

[StrangeSox]

2) for the "good guy" with a gun to screw up and do something stupid, irresponsible or malicious.

 

 

You just said it there yourself, the good guy will screw up and act like a criminal. No straw man needed, you provided the proof right there.

"Do something stupid, irresponsible or malicious" does not immediately lead to "stand up in a movie theater and start shooting people at random." You keep jumping right to the bad-faith extreme in this thread.

[EvilMonkey]

"Do something stupid, irresponsible or malicious" does not immediately lead to "stand up in a movie theater and start shooting people at random." You keep jumping right to the bad-faith extreme in this thread.

Your #2 wasn't bath faith? You think nobody but the so-called professionals can handle a gun without going psycho.

[StrangeSox]

Your #2 wasn't bath faith? You think nobody but the so-called professionals can handle a gun without going psycho.

 

You keep confusing "some" and "literally every single one" in this thread. When Balta pointed out that if you remove guns from the equation of a lot of gun deaths, there would be a lot fewer deaths, you jumped right to "Exaggerate much? No other reason? Got it." When I tried pointing out the difference between necessary and sufficient causes, you jumped right to "so anytime a person dies and a gun is present, they would be alive if the gun wasn't there. Got it.".

 

You can't know who is the "good guy with a gun" and who is the "bad guy with a gun" for now and all points in the future. The "good guy with a gun" could get pissed off while waiting in line for pizza and shoot someone. They could get pissed off at the guy talking in the theater in front of them and shoot someone. They could have depressive issues and shoot themselves. They could leave the gun out where its accessible and a child ends up hurting or killing themselves or someone else. The more guns there are out there, the more the chances of these things happening increases.

 

Absolutely nowhere in there am I saying that "nobody but the so-called professionals can handle a gun without going psycho." You are completely missing the point.

[Jake]

I think there is not necessarily a clear dividing line of "good people" and "bad people" or criminals vs. non-criminals nor should there be. And there is also a vast spectrum of ability to make snap judgments, competence using a weapon, etc. When we hear about things like police violence, it is not always necessarily the issue that the cops in question are bad people, but that they made bad judgments (sometimes on bad premises) which had an irrevocable effect. Guns are really good at making temporary lapses have permanent consequences. See our suicide rates in the US for more details.

 

Most wouldn't deny that there are specific situations in which a private citizen would be safer because they have a gun. After all, most of us know that the people who treasure their right to own a gun are not insane. There is a logical reason that is very compelling -> if I have a gun and someone tries to kill me, I have a weapon that is probably just as or more lethal than what my foe has. Others dwell on the "I need this to keep big government in check" argument, but I think that is not nearly as much of a driving force behind the sentiment. What I and many others would argue is that it is hard to use a gun effectively in self-defense, that even during justified self-defensive use there are serious risks to others, and that the individual need for a privately owned gun has on the whole created a far less safe environment due to how difficult it is to control who has those guns and what they do with them. Many others have rightly mentioned that there is basically no guarantee that a "good person" or non-criminal who buys a gun has any clue how to operate it, which is sad and should be seen by responsible gun owners as a serious threat to their own rights.

 

And I don't want to neglect to mention that not all guns are the same. Lots of shotguns and rifles held by private citizens are a lot less likely to lead to harm for the general public than are lots of handguns. If everyone with a weapon had essentially no ability to conceal them just due to the sheer size, it'd be a lot easier to figure out who is dangerous. But as long as there are guns that more or less fit into a pants pocket or otherwise holstered out of sight, the "common" gun criminal will have a lot of success. Of course when we talk about the calculated mass shooting scenario, handguns would have their drawbacks for those kinds of perpetrators and thus we have things like assault weapons bans (which aren't inherently wrong, just fail to address the type of firearm used in most murders).

 

Lastly I'm going to say again that we could have a much more sensible conversation about these issues if the federal government were allowed to fund/perform research on gun violence, but the insane fear of a gun registry has prevented that from happening. For something with so much import to our society, there is astonishingly little that we have clarified scientifically about what is going on. I'd be happy to live in a mostly gun-free society, but I understand that so long as I live in this society, there will probably be 300 million or more guns around. So from a pragmatic standpoint I'd love to know as much as I can about gun crime so I can think about what solutions can best make a dent in gun violence while giving as much freedom to own and use firearms as possible. We of course know that economic prosperity is a really good way to prevent it, which is why we have observed a downward trend in the problem over the years (that and the elimination of unleaded paint and better resources for family planning). We can do better, though.

Edited July 27, 2015 by Jake

[EvilMonkey]

You keep confusing "some" and "literally every single one" in this thread. When Balta pointed out that if you remove guns from the equation of a lot of gun deaths, there would be a lot fewer deaths, you jumped right to "Exaggerate much? No other reason? Got it." When I tried pointing out the difference between necessary and sufficient causes, you jumped right to "so anytime a person dies and a gun is present, they would be alive if the gun wasn't there. Got it.".

 

You can't know who is the "good guy with a gun" and who is the "bad guy with a gun" for now and all points in the future. The "good guy with a gun" could get pissed off while waiting in line for pizza and shoot someone. They could get pissed off at the guy talking in the theater in front of them and shoot someone. They could have depressive issues and shoot themselves. They could leave the gun out where its accessible and a child ends up hurting or killing themselves or someone else. The more guns there are out there, the more the chances of these things happening increases.

 

Absolutely nowhere in there am I saying that "nobody but the so-called professionals can handle a gun without going psycho." You are completely missing the point.

thousands of people die every year for no other reason than a gun is present.

 

That was the quote from Balta. NO OTHER REASON. I didn't make those words up, he did. If he meant something else, he should have typed something else. You are the first to jump on whatever fits your narrative, the exact word or the meaning. Well, his exact words are very damn clear there. NO OTHER REASON.

 

In some but not all cases of deaths caused by guns, the person would still be alive if a gun had not been present. - StrangeSox

OK, how many? 10%? 50? You have no clue. You can guess, but other than some suicide studies, you have no clue.

 

 

 

As for not knowing the good guy vs the bad guy, in most cases you are right, you don't know. You also don't know who is going to have a heart attack while behind the wheel of a car. Want to ban those as well? Your method of dealing with that is denying everyone their right to bear arms and protect themselves the way THEY see fit.

 

Absolutely nowhere in there am I saying that "nobody but the so-called professionals can handle a gun without going psycho."

Yeah, but like Tex said, you are assuming that the inner demon is there in everyone, just waiting to snap by doing "something stupid, irresponsible or malicious."

[Texsox]

Those doctors, lawyers, professors, truck drivers, construction workers, and secretaries also aren't likely to be extremely well trained at aiming firearms in a dark movie theater, yet we get presented the fantasy that they would be.

 

No, you keep presenting that fantasy. You set up a situation and show how a hypothetical idiot with a gun would react.

 

 

[Texsox]

And let's think about what the theater will look like during the shooting.

 

Has anyone ever looked around a movie theater? I might have special vision but I can see almost everyone in a theater. It's pretty bright with that movie going and everything. Your eyes get adjusted once you are in there for a while. Now, I'm guessing a lot of people are hiding and still others are running away from the shooter. How many people are running towards the gunman and standing really tall to be shot? Is the gunman surrounded by dozens of people standing there waving their arms?

 

What do you think it looks like?

[Jenksismyhero]

You keep confusing "some" and "literally every single one" in this thread. When Balta pointed out that if you remove guns from the equation of a lot of gun deaths, there would be a lot fewer deaths, you jumped right to "Exaggerate much? No other reason? Got it." When I tried pointing out the difference between necessary and sufficient causes, you jumped right to "so anytime a person dies and a gun is present, they would be alive if the gun wasn't there. Got it.".

 

You can't know who is the "good guy with a gun" and who is the "bad guy with a gun" for now and all points in the future. The "good guy with a gun" could get pissed off while waiting in line for pizza and shoot someone. They could get pissed off at the guy talking in the theater in front of them and shoot someone. They could have depressive issues and shoot themselves. They could leave the gun out where its accessible and a child ends up hurting or killing themselves or someone else. The more guns there are out there, the more the chances of these things happening increases.

 

Absolutely nowhere in there am I saying that "nobody but the so-called professionals can handle a gun without going psycho." You are completely missing the point.

 

Of course the problem with this is the myth-making to prove your point. We've had concealed carry for decades now. Those events don't happen on a regular basis. They're incredibly rare.

 

People who leave their guns around for kids are irresponsible. Some are morons, some just made awful, regrettable mistakes. But so are people that let their kids drown in pools. It's a sad tragedy in both cases, but in the one instance we don't all scream "ban pools!" Why not? More kids die from that than from guns.

 

[StrangeSox]

thousands of people die every year for no other reason than a gun is present.

 

That was the quote from Balta. NO OTHER REASON. I didn't make those words up, he did. If he meant something else, he should have typed something else. You are the first to jump on whatever fits your narrative, the exact word or the meaning. Well, his exact words are very damn clear there. NO OTHER REASON.

 

Yes, his words are exceeding clear and accurate. If a gun had not been present in many circumstances, the person would still be alive. The gun is a necessary but not necessarily sufficient cause in those cases.

 

In some but not all cases of deaths caused by guns, the person would still be alive if a gun had not been present. - StrangeSox

OK, how many? 10%? 50? You have no clue. You can guess, but other than some suicide studies, you have no clue.

I didn't claim to know an exact number. As Jake points out above, there's some pretty specific reasons why we have such poor data on gun ownership and gun violence in this country, but that's really beside the point. Look at the number of suicides by guns and you easily every have the thousands Balta mentioned. Look at incidents of stray bullets or overheated tempers leading to deaths. It happens.

 

 

As for not knowing the good guy vs the bad guy, in most cases you are right, you don't know. You also don't know who is going to have a heart attack while behind the wheel of a car. Want to ban those as well? Your method of dealing with that is denying everyone their right to bear arms and protect themselves the way THEY see fit.

 

I am glad you agree that we can't know ahead of time who is the "good guy" or not, and as Jake says above, it's not a simple, black-and-white categorization anyway. I haven't said anything about complete gun bans, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from. Analogies to cars and water (or any other object that is either necessary to live or serves numerous other useful, primary purposes) are bad-faith arguments; no, we shouldn't ban cars because cars are very very useful for their primary function of transporting people. We do heavily restrict and regulate and license and register cars, though. We should do the same for weapons who primary function is to kill things.

 

Absolutely nowhere in there am I saying that "nobody but the so-called professionals can handle a gun without going psycho."

Yeah, but like Tex said, you are assuming that the inner demon is there in everyone, just waiting to snap by doing "something stupid, irresponsible or malicious."

 

No, you're making the same mistake again. The point is that you don't know who the "good guys" are and it's not even possible to know that categorically. But some non-trivial number of gun owners will do something stupid, irresponsible or malicious and it will lead to injury and death for themselves or others. For some, it will be completely unintentional harm. For some others, yeah, they will "snap" and they'll shoot somebody over something trivial. If we reduce the number of guns out there and how many people are carrying them around with them, we reduce the odds of that sort of thing happening.

 

[StrangeSox]

And let's think about what the theater will look like during the shooting.

 

Has anyone ever looked around a movie theater? I might have special vision but I can see almost everyone in a theater. It's pretty bright with that movie going and everything. Your eyes get adjusted once you are in there for a while. Now, I'm guessing a lot of people are hiding and still others are running away from the shooter. How many people are running towards the gunman and standing really tall to be shot? Is the gunman surrounded by dozens of people standing there waving their arms?

 

What do you think it looks like?

I'd imagine it would be quite the disorienting situation with people running everywhere and many not even being able to quickly and accurately realize 1) what's going on and 2) where the shots are actually coming from. As Balta pointed out, at some point, the shooter in this case walked out with the crowd and was attempting to blend in before he spotted the police. That's a whole theater full of people who didn't recognize the man who was just trying to kill them.

 

People get really bad tunnel vision in situations like that. Police and military (and private security forces) train in these high-stress, active shooter scenarios and they can still fail. I don't think you can expect the person who took a 6 hour class on a saturday and goes to the range to shoot at paper occasionally to perform in a situation as crowded and disorienting as an active shooter in a movie theater.

[Jenksismyhero]

I'd imagine it would be quite the disorienting situation with people running everywhere and many not even being able to quickly and accurately realize 1) what's going on and 2) where the shots are actually coming from. As Balta pointed out, at some point, the shooter in this case walked out with the crowd and was attempting to blend in before he spotted the police. That's a whole theater full of people who didn't recognize the man who was just trying to kill them.

 

People get really bad tunnel vision in situations like that. Police and military (and private security forces) train in these high-stress, active shooter scenarios and they can still fail. I don't think you can expect the person who took a 6 hour class on a saturday and goes to the range to shoot at paper occasionally to perform in a situation as crowded and disorienting as an active shooter in a movie theater.

 

How much worse could that situation get though? A guy strapped with guns shooting a crowd of people. Let's assume Tex is in the theater and in the middle of the chaos he gets off 10 shots. He accidentally kills (or hits) 2 people, but manages to hit the shooter and kills him before he can reload and kill another 5-10 people. Why wouldn't that be a better outcome?

 

Take this site for what it's worth, but there are links to the online stories:

 

http://gunssavelives.net/browse-by-state/

 

Concealed carry/guns have been a positive in a number of situations. It's not ALL bad.

Edited July 27, 2015 by Jenksismybitch

[StrangeSox]

Of course the problem with this is the myth-making to prove your point. We've had concealed carry for decades now. Those events don't happen on a regular basis. They're incredibly rare.

 

I agree that they are rare. They still happen more than they should, though, and there's scant evidence that CC makes us safer on the whole. Balta's issue also reaches to private gun ownership in general, where we unquestionably have thousands of deaths by suicide a year that we likely otherwise wouldn't have. Those events are not rare.

 

People who leave their guns around for kids are irresponsible. Some are morons, some just made awful, regrettable mistakes. But so are people that let their kids drown in pools. It's a sad tragedy in both cases, but in the one instance we don't all scream "ban pools!" Why not? More kids die from that than from guns.

 

Look at how strongly groups like the NRA fight against any sort of safe storage requirements. The most ardent gun supporters believe the only way to keep a gun is to keep it loaded and immediately accessible in case of a home invasion. They don't store their guns in a safe but sit strapped day and night. They don't keep their guns unloaded and with a trigger lock but propped up in the corner beside their bed just in case.

 

We do regulate pools and require certain safety measures for them (they need to be permitted, they usually need to be fenced with a self-closing gate). Pools serve a primary purpose that isn't "to kill something," though, and you generally can't kill someone else intentionally with a pool and you definitely can't do it as quickly as you could with a gun. As Jake put it, a gun makes a temporary lapse have a permanent consequence. They're designed specifically to kill something, and they're generally very good at doing that.

[StrangeSox]

How much worse could that situation get though? A guy strapped with guns shooting a crowd of people. Let's assume Tex is in the theater and in the middle of the chaos he gets off 10 shots. He accidentally kills (or hits) 2 people, but manages to hit the shooter and kills him before he can reload and kill another 5-10 people. Why wouldn't that be a better outcome?

 

In this case? Because we'd now have 4 people dead instead of 2.

 

And I'd just point out that this happened in Louisiana, not exactly the place with the most strict gun laws.

 

Take this site for what it's worth, but there are links to the online stories:

 

http://gunssavelives.net/browse-by-state/

 

Concealed carry/guns have been a positive in a number of situations. It's not ALL bad.

blocked by work filter

 

Absolutely there are cases where the presence of a gun led to a better outcome, but that's not the argument. The argument is if, on the whole, our gun culture is a positive or negative factor. Are we better off with more and more people carrying weapons? Are we better off with tens of thousands of new guns spread across the country every year?

[Jenksismyhero]

I agree that they are rare. They still happen more than they should, though, and there's scant evidence that CC makes us safer on the whole. Balta's issue also reaches to private gun ownership in general, where we unquestionably have thousands of deaths by suicide a year that we likely otherwise wouldn't have. Those events are not rare.

 

So because people off themselves with a gun my constitutional right should be disregarded? That's pretty f'd up.

 

Look at how strongly groups like the NRA fight against any sort of safe storage requirements. The most ardent gun supporters believe the only way to keep a gun is to keep it loaded and immediately accessible in case of a home invasion. They don't store their guns in a safe but sit strapped day and night. They don't keep their guns unloaded and with a trigger lock but propped up in the corner beside their bed just in case.

 

I mean I don't agree with them on that, but you're talking about an act that is illegal in more than half of the states and that don't result in a LOT (relative) of deaths. I think those measures should be in the law for all states if you have a kid. But I can understand the argument that for self defense purposes you would want your gun ready and available. I think the disconnect here is that usually the people for those laws are people who live in cities, usually nice neighborhoods, that have never had to think about someone randomly showing up in their homes. Go live out in the country a bit where it'd take 30 minutes or an hour for a cop to show up. That changes your opinion, or should.

 

We do regulate pools and require certain safety measures for them (they need to be permitted, they usually need to be fenced with a self-closing gate). Pools serve a primary purpose that isn't "to kill something," though, and you generally can't kill someone else intentionally with a pool and you definitely can't do it as quickly as you could with a gun. As Jake put it, a gun makes a temporary lapse have a permanent consequence. They're designed specifically to kill something, and they're generally very good at doing that.

 

So what? We're talking about unintentional deaths here. A gun sitting out, loaded, without anyone around, also doesn't kill anyone. It requires that accidental act for the death to occur. In that sense it's the very same thing. Except the numbers are like 4000 versus 1600. Get rid of the pools and those drownings don't occur. They happen "more than they should."

Edited July 27, 2015 by Jenksismybitch

[Balta1701]

And let's think about what the theater will look like during the shooting.

 

Has anyone ever looked around a movie theater? I might have special vision but I can see almost everyone in a theater. It's pretty bright with that movie going and everything. Your eyes get adjusted once you are in there for a while. Now, I'm guessing a lot of people are hiding and still others are running away from the shooter. How many people are running towards the gunman and standing really tall to be shot? Is the gunman surrounded by dozens of people standing there waving their arms?

 

What do you think it looks like?

And yet, the actual shooter in this case was able to walk out with the crowd and they didn't recognize him.

[StrangeSox]

So because people off themselves with a gun my constitutional right should be disregarded? That's pretty f'd up.

 

Because over 30,000 Americans die every year from guns, we should implement policies to reduce those numbers.

 

 

 

I mean I don't agree with them on that, but you're talking about an act that is illegal in more than half of the states and that don't result in a LOT (relative) of deaths. I think those measures should be in the law for all states if you have a kid. But I can understand the argument that for self defense purposes you would want your gun ready and available. I think the disconnect here is that usually the people for those laws are people who live in cities, usually nice neighborhoods, that have never had to think about someone randomly showing up in their homes. Go live out in the country a bit where it'd take 30 minutes or an hour for a cop to show up. That changes your opinion, or should.

 

What is the threat of someone breaking into your home in rural middle-of-nowhere country versus suburban or urban areas? I think the odds are directly the opposite here.

 

 

 

So what? We're talking about unintentional deaths here. A gun sitting out, loaded, without anyone around, also doesn't kill anyone. It requires that accidental act for the death to occur. In that sense it's the very same thing. Except the numbers are like 4000 versus 1600. Get rid of the pools and those drownings don't occur. They happen "more than they should."

 

I don't think we were ever talking exclusively about unintentional gun deaths.

[Soxbadger]

Of course the problem with this is the myth-making to prove your point. We've had concealed carry for decades now. Those events don't happen on a regular basis. They're incredibly rare.

 

People who leave their guns around for kids are irresponsible. Some are morons, some just made awful, regrettable mistakes. But so are people that let their kids drown in pools. It's a sad tragedy in both cases, but in the one instance we don't all scream "ban pools!" Why not? More kids die from that than from guns.

 

Because pools have a purpose outside of scaring/hurting/killing things.

 

Why not just let people have nuclear weapons? Less people die per year from nukes than peanuts, so obviously peanuts are more dangerous.

 

This line of argument is extremely boring.

 

[Jenksismyhero]

In this case? Because we'd now have 4 people dead instead of 2.

 

And I'd just point out that this happened in Louisiana, not exactly the place with the most strict gun laws.

 

I assumed we were still talking about the Colorado shooting. I thought he killed 10-12 people.

 

 

blocked by work filter

 

Absolutely there are cases where the presence of a gun led to a better outcome, but that's not the argument. The argument is if, on the whole, our gun culture is a positive or negative factor. Are we better off with more and more people carrying weapons? Are we better off with tens of thousands of new guns spread across the country every year?

 

IMO it's an "insignificant" (again, relative term) amount. I think people die tragically from a lot of random causes that if we really wanted to make a big deal out of it, we could, and we could claim that they would all be prevented and won't someone think of the children, etc. Guns are just taboo for a sizeable chunk of this country (mostly urban people, mostly people who have had zero exposure to guns) and a big talking point these days. Again, if you really want to save lives based on some preventable act go ban fast food so that 200k people or whatever a year don't die from heart disease.

[Balta1701]

thousands of people die every year for no other reason than a gun is present.

 

That was the quote from Balta. NO OTHER REASON. I didn't make those words up, he did. If he meant something else, he should have typed something else. You are the first to jump on whatever fits your narrative, the exact word or the meaning. Well, his exact words are very damn clear there. NO OTHER REASON.

 

In some but not all cases of deaths caused by guns, the person would still be alive if a gun had not been present. - StrangeSox

OK, how many? 10%? 50? You have no clue. You can guess, but other than some suicide studies, you have no clue.

Like I said in reply the last time, when the Israeli army banned their soldiers from taking guns home on the weekends they saw a rapid 40% drop in their suicide rate. Throw that in with the several hundred accidental deaths per year and without even talking about crime one bit, without doing anything about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, you're talking about thousands of deaths that would 100% not have happened had there been no gun present.

 

Maybe it's 10%. Maybe it's 50%. If it's 10%...right away that's 3000 lives per year. That is "thousands of people every year".

 

That's how bad the gun problem in our country really is. The numbers that you threw out add up to costing thousands of lives every year for no reason other than these fantasies about how this time I'll really get to be the hero.

[Jenksismyhero]

Because pools have a purpose outside of scaring/hurting/killing things.

 

Why not just let people have nuclear weapons? Less people die per year from nukes than peanuts, so obviously peanuts are more dangerous.

 

This line of argument is extremely boring.

 

So do guns. They have more uses than that. Our use of guns has evolved over time to include other things. Just like anything else. That's like saying cars are only for travel. Just not true anymore.

[Soxbadger]

Jenks,

 

You are all over the place. Last time I checked eating McDonalds couldnt accidentally kill my neighbor. There is a huge difference between laws that are designed to "protect me from me" and laws that are designed to "protect me from you."

 

(edit)

 

What is a gun good for besides for the above purposes?

 

And before you answer to quick, hunting is "hurting or killing" something.

 

Unless you are going to reference the Simpsons episode where Homer uses his gun to change the channel, because as we all know, guns make great remote controls.

Edited July 27, 2015 by Soxbadger

[EvilMonkey]

Like I said in reply the last time, when the Israeli army banned their soldiers from taking guns home on the weekends they saw a rapid 40% drop in their suicide rate. Throw that in with the several hundred accidental deaths per year and without even talking about crime one bit, without doing anything about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, you're talking about thousands of deaths that would 100% not have happened had there been no gun present.

 

Maybe it's 10%. Maybe it's 50%. If it's 10%...right away that's 3000 lives per year. That is "thousands of people every year".

 

That's how bad the gun problem in our country really is. The numbers that you threw out add up to costing thousands of lives every year for no reason other than these fantasies about how this time I'll really get to be the hero.

3000 out of 320,760,000 people (as of 4-15-15) is .0000935%. HUGE problem we have there. I am sure it is huge for the 3000 families effected, but as an overall 'epidemic' it is peanuts. You could probably find more than 3000 people who were saved by guns each year to balance that out.

[StrangeSox]

I assumed we were still talking about the Colorado shooting. I thought he killed 10-12 people.

 

When was anyone talking about the Colorado shooting? This is a thread that started with the more recent mass shooting in a Louisiana theater. Two women were killed and the shooter killed himself.

 

 

 

 

IMO it's an "insignificant" (again, relative term) amount. I think people die tragically from a lot of random causes that if we really wanted to make a big deal out of it, we could, and we could claim that they would all be prevented and won't someone think of the children, etc. Guns are just taboo for a sizeable chunk of this country (mostly urban people, mostly people who have had zero exposure to guns) and a big talking point these days.

 

Guns are taboo because they are designed and used to intentionally kill people. That is their purpose. As far as who has the most exposure to gun homicide and violence, it's more urban. Suicides are actually more rural.

 

Again, if you really want to save lives based on some preventable act go ban fast food so that 200k people or whatever a year don't die from heart disease.

Trans fats were recently banned. People can talk about and do more than one thing.