Another school killing in USA

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carrie
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Another school killing in USA

Post by carrie »

Yet another tragic event in the US of A at least 12 students shot dead many others injured. It said on the news that every week there is at least one child killed by gunfire at school. I suppose we don't hear of these incidents because they are not mass slaughter what a reflection on a society.
All the efforts put into combating terrorists yet many more killed by the American obsession with owing guns.


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Re: Another school killing in USA

Post by newcastle »

I've been listening to some of the debate about this issue today. A rerun of the usual arguments. The Second amendment is inviolable. God gave us the right to bear arms. It's not guns that kill...it's people etc. etc.

Trump has entered the debate with a suggestion that schools should be protected with armed guards...in the same way the various establishments are...and important people.

All very well....and all very strange to the rest of the world which has stringent gun laws and, with a few exceptions, doesn't suffer the same level of gun violence. Certainly not regular school massacres.

Even if you accept the argument that a nutter with evil intent could obtain weaponry whatever laws you put in force, what is it with the mentality of
a number of young Americans that they are driven to commit such hideous acts of violence, often with no reasonable explanation, with such regularity.

Something deeply sick in their society.
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Re: Another school killing in USA

Post by HEPZIBAH »

An interesting article about Australia's reaction to a mass shooting

In 1996, Australia Enacted Strict Gun Laws. It Hasn't Had a Mass Shooting Since.
By Will Oremus

As America grapples with the fallout of yet another mass shooting—a school shooting in Parkland, Florida, on Wednesday has left at least 17 people dead, according to law enforcement officials—the long and bitter debate over gun control in America will inevitably be reopened. After Sandy Hook, Will Oremus highlighted the lessons of Australia’s strict gun laws and the resulting success in preventing subsequent mass shootings there. The original post is reprinted below. Oremus also checked back in on how Australia’s gun laws were doing for a 2017 post that can be read here.

On April 28, 1996, a gunman opened fire on tourists in a seaside resort in Port Arthur, Tasmania. By the time he was finished, he had killed 35 people and wounded 23 more. It was the worst mass murder in Australia’s history.

Twelve days later, Australia’s government did something remarkable. Led by newly elected conservative Prime Minister John Howard, it announced a bipartisan deal with state and local governments to enact sweeping gun-control measures. A decade and a half hence, the results of these policy changes are clear: They worked really, really well.

At the heart of the push was a massive buyback of more than 600,000 semi-automatic shotguns and rifles, or about one-fifth of all firearms in circulation in Australia. The country’s new gun laws prohibited private sales, required that all weapons be individually registered to their owners, and required that gun buyers present a “genuine reason” for needing each weapon at the time of the purchase. (Self-defense did not count.) In the wake of the tragedy, polls showed public support for these measures at upwards of 90 percent.

What happened next has been the subject of several academic studies. Violent crime and gun-related deaths did not come to an end in Australia, of course. But as the Washington Post’s Wonkblog pointed out in August, homicides by firearm plunged 59 percent between 1995 and 2006, with no corresponding increase in non-firearm-related homicides. The drop in suicides by gun was even steeper: 65 percent. Studies found a close correlation between the sharp declines and the gun buybacks. Robberies involving a firearm also dropped significantly. Meanwhile, home invasions did not increase, contrary to fears that firearm ownership is needed to deter such crimes. But here’s the most stunning statistic. In the decade before the Port Arthur massacre, there had been 11 mass shootings in the country. There hasn’t been a single one in Australia since.

There have been some contrarian studies about the decrease in gun violence in Australia, including a 2006 paper that argued the decline in gun-related homicides after Port Arthur was simply a continuation of trends already under way. But that paper’s methodology has been discredited, which is not surprising when you consider that its authors were affiliated with pro-gun groups. Other reports from gun advocates have similarly cherry-picked anecdotal evidence or presented outright fabrications in attempting to make the case that Australia’s more-restrictive laws didn’t work. Those are effectively refuted by findings from peer-reviewed papers, which note that the rate of decrease in gun-related deaths more than doubled following the gun buyback, and that states with the highest buyback rates showed the steepest declines. A 2011 Harvard summary of the research concluded that, at the time the laws were passed in 1996, “it would have been difficult to imagine more compelling future evidence of a beneficial effect.”

Whether the same policies would work as well in the United States—or whether similar legislation would have any chance of being passed here in the first place—is an open question. Howard, the conservative leader behind the Australian reforms, wrote an op-ed in an Australian paper after visiting the United States in the wake of the Aurora shootings. He came away convinced that America needed to change its gun laws, but lamented its lack of will to do so.

There is more to this than merely the lobbying strength of the National Rifle Association and the proximity of the November presidential election. It is hard to believe that their reaction would have been any different if the murders in Aurora had taken place immediately after the election of either Obama or Romney. So deeply embedded is the gun culture of the US, that millions of law-abiding, Americans truly believe that it is safer to own a gun, based on the chilling logic that because there are so many guns in circulation, one's own weapon is needed for self-protection. To put it another way, the situation is so far gone there can be no turning back.
That’s certainly how things looked after the Aurora shooting. But after Sandy Hook, with the nation shocked and groping for answers once again, I wonder if Americans are still so sure that we have nothing to learn from Australia’s example.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/crime/2012/1 ... ide_a.html
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Re: Another school killing in USA

Post by Major Thom »

The problem is half the time Americans do not know if they are on this Earth or Fullers Earth. The Gun Committee is so strong and it runs a cartel with the politicians it supports and those who do not want to have the Gun Committee support them get a gun put to their own heads until they do. Why would a man married with a couple of kids want to own a semi automatic and live in the leafy suburbs, does not make sense, or is it the fact that owning a gun makes him more powerful to his friends. The mentality of the Americans when it comes to guns never fails to amaze me, nor does it impress me. I bet the President even has a pistol hidden in his birds nest.
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Re: Another school killing in USA

Post by Dusak »

They've time enough to learn from past happenings such as this latest one, they haven't, so the mass killings will go on. Money and politics have always risen above the worth of a human life. Yesterday in America the FBI arrested teenage male twins plus a teacher . They had amassed chemical components to make an explosive device, intending to detonate it in a local school where the former teacher had taught and the boys had attended. They found detailed instructions downloaded from the net showing how to construct the bomb on the teachers laptop. The FBI had been secretly observing these individuals since December last year after a tip off. One of the boys posed himself on social media sites posing with various kinds of firearms.
Life is your's to do with as you wish- do not let other's try to control it for you. Count Dusak- 1345.
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Re: Another school killing in USA

Post by Major Thom »

Its sad that American men think a Gun is like a Penis, the bigger and better they are the more manly they feel!!
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Re: Another school killing in USA

Post by Dusak »

That makes mine a 9mm snub nosed six shot one then. :mrgreen:
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Re: Another school killing in USA

Post by newcastle »

Trump Signals Interest in Gun Background Checks After Shooting ...


https://www.bloomberg.com/.../trump-spe ... roving-gun...

15 hours ago - President Donald Trump is using part of the U.S. holiday weekend in South Florida to discuss how to improve school safety and prevent gun violence following the country's latest mass shooting.

Signalling? Puffs of black smoke from the White House?

Maybe the NRA will be asking for a refund of the $20 million or so they contributed to trump's election campaign :ct
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Re: Another school killing in USA

Post by carrie »

He will probably introduce a law that all students are allowed to carry firearms so that they can defend themselves.
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