Connecticut School Shooting

[RivkahChaya]

Ah. Right. Virginia Tech. It makes sense that Virginia would have some kind of law like that now, because the Virginia Tech situation couldn't go by without some kind of gun control reform, but as someone who has lived in New York and DC (also, being stationed briefly for training in Maryland), I can tell you that Virginia is notorious for being the go-to place when you don't want to wait for a gun in your own jurisdiction. So I can totally see new laws targeting possession by people who have been under psychiatric care, while leaving other people alone.

[RavenDarkendale]

Ah. Right. Virginia Tech. It makes sense that Virginia would have some kind of law like that now, because the Virginia Tech situation couldn't go by without some kind of gun control reform, but as someone who has lived in New York and DC (also, being stationed briefly for training in Maryland), I can tell you that Virginia is notorious for being the go-to place when you don't want to wait for a gun in your own jurisdiction. So I can totally see new laws targeting possession by people who have been under psychiatric care, while leaving other people alone.

Sadly, you are correct in your entire statement. Virginia is almost as bad as Texas in the world of "You want a gun? Sign here. How big a gun ya want?"

[caz]

Hi All,

It's all very easy to say "it's people who kill people, not guns", and "anyone who is determined to take human life will find a way, with or without a gun". But is this strictly the case when examined more closely? And is it any kind of argument for sitting back and saying that the next daft b*stard who feels inclined to take out his resentments on a schoolroom full of your kids may as well have a gun to do it with as any other type of weapon?

For starters, why make it that simple for these people? And more to the point, how do we know that any of the individuals responsible for this or previous shooting sprees would have had the will - or indeed the balls - to "do it anyway" if they had had to make do without a gun? Could it not have been the gun itself in at least some of these atrocities that provided the very determination needed to set the person on their path to destruction?

Imagine what would happen if the same arguments were made for everyone to have the right to a handy suicide pill in case they had a particularly bad day and wanted to end it all in the quickest and simplest way possible. "It's people who kill themselves, not suicide pills. And anyone determined enough to commit suicide will find a way, pill or no pill." You'd have people topping themselves all over the shop without a second thought if they didn't have to weigh up the pros and cons of diving under a train, jumping off a cliff or washing hundreds of tablets down with gin.

So - why make it as easy for the next school shooting to happen as the last?

Love,

Caz
X

[Ally]

The gun "influenced" them? Really? That's the argument now being made. It's like the plot of a Terry Pratchett novel, literally, with "the gonne" exerting some malevolent influence that causes people to act against their nature, or at least giving in to their more evil nature. Fantasy is now the new reality.

There are rules in place. This mother knowing full well her son was a whackjob had guns in the house and she paid the price. Her death is not a tragedy to me. The lives of those children were a tragedy, but they are no more a tragedy than the five kids who dies a week later when their car went off a road into an icy pond. They are no more a tragedy than the six children who died in your country when a couple of people decided to commit arson. Or the seven kids who just died in a chinese fire or the eight that died two years ago in china when a man stabbed them.

Children die. It sucks. People die. It sucks.

But blaming inanimate objects for their deaths is just grasping at straws.


And frankly, I am entirely for a suicide pill. If people want to end their lives, they should have the right to do it in as painless and hassle-free manner as possible. Why precisely should someone have to go on living because "society" thinks they ought to? People are not nearly as prone to killing themselves as you seem to think, which is why people put themselves through agonizing and expensive cancer treatments that haven't a shot in hell of working for the ten percent chance that they might. That is why people suffering from ALS or other degenerative diseases allow it to progress to the point where they can't do anything about it even if they decide they want to because they are trapped in bodies that no longer obey. People aren't naturally hard-wired for suicide. And if people do want to die, who are you, or me, or anyone else to tell them they are required to go on living? Are people our slaves? Forced to live at our whim rather than their own?

People who really want to kill themselves should be allowed to do it in as clean and easy manner as possible. How is it better they are forced to throw themselves in front a train and inconvenience everyone on that train not to mention the people who have to clean up the mess, or blow their brains all over the bathroom wall, again, leaving someone who loves them to clean up the mess? How precisely is that a better alternative?

As someone who fully intends to kill themselves one day (hopefully in the far distant future), I only hope we advance to the point where people's kneejerk reactions to "life is soo important" doesn't prevent me from having a clean and foolproof method which doesn't force me to inconvenience my family with a gruesome cleanup when I decide to take myself out. But I surely don't want the slow agonizing death of cancer I've witnessed most of my family having or a slow descent into mindless dementia I've seen the rest of my family have. People should have choices that don't involve a slow, dehumanizing, agonizing death, where they are basically drugged to the point of mindlessness as they slowly waste away because somehow that's viewed as better than just a quick, clean death.

[RivkahChaya]

When a child shoots another child because one of them has found an improperly stored gun, you cannot use the "guns don't kill people" argument, because I refuse to accept that there would have been pretty much the same outcome, if the child had found an improperly stored butcher knife.

However, on an entirely other tack, I really wish the US would stop and look at the fact that some many young people are shooting up SCHOOLS. The very thought of schools, schooling, and things connected with school is rage, anxiety, or depression provoking for a huge number of Americans, and that's the reason people shoot up schools. I'm tired of hearing how the youth of America are going bad because of violent TV, video games, or poor nutrition. No one is shooting up Comcast offices, arcades, the electronics section of Walmart, or McDonald's.

On yet another note, to mix my metaphors, about 10 or 15 years ago, one the Northern states (one of the ones with lots of hunting) passed a law that sounds really silly on the surface, but I'm sure was meant to address a real problem. In my opinion, sometimes you need to address a problem just by saying "No," but there was probably a lot of "My second amendment!" shouting going on.

The law was that blind people couldn't go hunting unless they were accompanies by a sighted hunter (by that, I think it means both people must be licensed to hunt). I know how stupid it sounds, and I know several blind people who grew up blind, many of them attending state schools for the blind, and they think it sounds stupid too, so be assured this law was not the result of "equal treatment" demands by the National Federation of the Blind. What I'm sure it was, was old people, who had hunted all their lives, and now had failing vision, but still insisted in going out in the woods with their rifles. When someone had proposed no longer licensing people who had become legally blind due to cataracts, glaucoma, or whatever, those were the ones who got mad, and the ones the new law was meant to placate.

So, yeah, some people in the US are gun nuts.

[Ally]

[QUOTE=RivkahChaya;250061]

When a child shoots another child because one of them has found an improperly stored gun, you cannot use the "guns don't kill people" argument, because I refuse to accept that there would have been pretty much the same outcome, if the child had found an improperly stored butcher knife.

Actually the gun still isn't to blame. The stupid idiotic parent who had a gun in the house and didn't teach their children how to handle guns responsibly is to blame. My father was a cop. I shot my first gun at about the age of 3. I knew that any time I wanted to shoot a gun, all I had to do was ask. I also knew that if I ever touched a gun without my dad there, I might as well shoot myself because I was as good as dead. There was no worry of us "finding" the gun. We all knew where it was, we also had absolutely no curiosity about it as we were well familiar with its use, and its rules and its workings. Therefore there was no danger in us "accidentally" shooting anyone and we didn't consider it interesting enough to go exploring or playing with.

It is parents who both want a gun, but don't want their children to have the responsibility and knowledge of the gun that are to blame in those situations. You don't have a gun in the house and then try to keep half the people in the house ignorant about it and how it works. Nothing is more exciting than "the forbidden object".

No one is shooting up Comcast offices, arcades, the electronics section of Walmart, or McDonald's.

We also don't require kids to stay in comcasts or mcdonald's for 8 hours a day either. I suppose we could make schooling optional and let them all drop out at 12, in point of fact, I think having 75 percent of students there past the age of 14 is really a waste of time regardless, but that's a whole different argument.

When someone had proposed no longer licensing people who had become legally blind due to cataracts, glaucoma, or whatever, those were the ones who got mad, and the ones the new law was meant to placate.

So, yeah, some people in the US are gun nuts.

Sorry no. This is not an example of "gun nuts". This is an example of people who when they get old, want to keep doing the same things they've always done, regardless of the impracticality or the danger. Whether it is living alone, or driving their car to the grocery store, or going hunting. Old people want to live the lives they've always done.

[Errata]

Ally is right in the inanimate object are not the problem. The common factor in every death is a human.

But that doesn't mean some people aren't gun nuts. Cause some people really really are.

[Cogidubnus]

Arguably it's not a problem for me...North America being so far away, why should I really care one way or another...However, as I like to think a few of the left-ponders I chat to are my friends, I suppose I ought to have a view...

I'm not directly concerned and it's not my day to day rights which are potentially affected, but I would urge my friends at least to consider some form of control, even if it be moderation rather than a ban...and ok it might take a hundred years or more to take full effect...but wouldn't that be worthwhile?

Either way, every good wish

Dave

[Errata]

Although here's a fun trick. Debate an NRA board member. Take every argument you have ever heard for an armed populace for the purposes of protection and self defense, and then use the same arguments word for word in order to protect a woman's right to an abortion. It was the first time I ever literally heard someone gnashing their teeth in rage. And it makes kind of a squeaking sound, making it almost impossible to keep a straight face

[caz]

The gun "influenced" them? Really? That's the argument now being made. It's like the plot of a Terry Pratchett novel, literally, with "the gonne" exerting some malevolent influence that causes people to act against their nature, or at least giving in to their more evil nature. Fantasy is now the new reality.

Hi Ally,

I don't think I used the word "influenced" as quoted above, but actually yes, I consider this a no-brainer. How many of those 20 kids would even have ended up hurt, let alone killed, if that mother's son had not had access to any guns? None of them would have been shot dead, for a start. But can you honestly say, hand on heart, that this same mother's son would without any doubt still have gone out and attacked those kids without a gun to call his friend? If he had to do it up close and personal with a kitchen knife or his bare hands, for example, or from a distance with a box of matches? The truth is, we just cannot know how many young lives might have been saved over the years, if the easiest, and arguably most instant of deadly weapons had not been an option for the gunmen responsible. Some may have "done it anyway", using whatever other means appealed to them, but surely not all?

There are rules in place. This mother knowing full well her son was a whackjob had guns in the house and she paid the price. Her death is not a tragedy to me. The lives of those children were a tragedy, but they are no more a tragedy than the five kids who dies a week later when their car went off a road into an icy pond. They are no more a tragedy than the six children who died in your country when a couple of people decided to commit arson. Or the seven kids who just died in a chinese fire or the eight that died two years ago in china when a man stabbed them.

But it's all about reasonable and unreasonable risk, and what can be done to try and lower the risk of any one child (or adult for that matter) having to face any of these life-threatening situations. That's why roads are gritted in icy weather, medicine bottles are made hard for kids to open and buildings are fitted with fire and smoke alarms and emergency exits. Thank goodness we don't just stand back and say "It sucks that people die in their cars and in fires, or leave their medicines lying about", but do what we can to lessen the chances of these tragedies happening. "It sucks that your kids may get shot in class today, or next week, or next year - get over it." Seems a tad harsh to me, but maybe that's not what you meant.

But blaming inanimate objects for their deaths is just grasping at straws.

That's just silly. Nobody suggested a gun doesn't need the idiot behind it to do all the damage. But an idiot without a gun can't do the same damage, and might not be so tempted to try with any other means.

And frankly, I am entirely for a suicide pill. If people want to end their lives, they should have the right to do it in as painless and hassle-free manner as possible. Why precisely should someone have to go on living because "society" thinks they ought to? People are not nearly as prone to killing themselves as you seem to think, which is why people put themselves through agonizing and expensive cancer treatments that haven't a shot in hell of working for the ten percent chance that they might. That is why people suffering from ALS or other degenerative diseases allow it to progress to the point where they can't do anything about it even if they decide they want to because they are trapped in bodies that no longer obey. People aren't naturally hard-wired for suicide. And if people do want to die, who are you, or me, or anyone else to tell them they are required to go on living? Are people our slaves? Forced to live at our whim rather than their own?

People who really want to kill themselves should be allowed to do it in as clean and easy manner as possible. How is it better they are forced to throw themselves in front a train and inconvenience everyone on that train not to mention the people who have to clean up the mess, or blow their brains all over the bathroom wall, again, leaving someone who loves them to clean up the mess? How precisely is that a better alternative?

As someone who fully intends to kill themselves one day (hopefully in the far distant future), I only hope we advance to the point where people's kneejerk reactions to "life is soo important" doesn't prevent me from having a clean and foolproof method which doesn't force me to inconvenience my family with a gruesome cleanup when I decide to take myself out. But I surely don't want the slow agonizing death of cancer I've witnessed most of my family having or a slow descent into mindless dementia I've seen the rest of my family have. People should have choices that don't involve a slow, dehumanizing, agonizing death, where they are basically drugged to the point of mindlessness as they slowly waste away because somehow that's viewed as better than just a quick, clean death.

I don't disagree with a lot of this in principle, but it's very unlikely to become a reality anytime soon, presumably because it would be too open to abuse and misuse by too many of the population. And there you have a fundamental difference. Nobody can apparently be trusted with something designed wholly to ease their own suffering and end their own life, yet so many are trusted with an inaminate object designed chiefly to inflict physical damage. It all seems a bit arse about face.

But then life is cruel, so why strive to make it less so?

Love,

Caz
X

[RivkahChaya]

I don't disagree with a lot of this [suicide pills, et al.] in principle, but it's very unlikely to become a reality anytime soon, presumably because it would be too open to abuse and misuse by too many of the population.

This is very true. One of the few reasoned arguments for not making the Plan-B pill available without a prescription was that someone might try to give it to a woman without her knowledge. That was made before the pill was, in fact, available, and most people were not well-informed about how it worked. --Honestly, I can't remember if the article I read was written when the pill in its current form actually existed, or was just a theory.

Anyway, the suicide pill is just a theory now, and an OTC suicide pill could easily be a murder pill, at least a theoretical one. One of Jack Kevorkian's arguments for his method of doctor-assisted suicide was that it allowed for a change of mind up to the last second, and another was that it was impossible to trick, and very difficult to coerce someone into it. His opinion that a doctor's involvement introduced a disinterested third party, which would check and balance family coercion, if assisted suicide for terminally ill or very debilitated people became legal.

Of course, and argument against doctor-assisted suicide is that a lot of doctors probably wouldn't want to engage in the practice, and the doctors who would would end up being few and far between, and might end up endangering themselves, just like doctors who provide abortions do now.

But a lot of doctors who wouldn't want to strap the carbon monoxide mask on people, and start the machine, would be less averse to prescribing a large dose of morphine. They'd need some assurance, though, that the patient was really going to use it for the purpose intended. Probably a cancer patient in a lot of pain and with months to live, certainly is, but it only takes one, to sell it to cover his funeral expenses, and leave his family something, to ruin the doctor's life.

[Errata]

This is very true. One of the few reasoned arguments for not making the Plan-B pill available without a prescription was that someone might try to give it to a woman without her knowledge. That was made before the pill was, in fact, available, and most people were not well-informed about how it worked. --Honestly, I can't remember if the article I read was written when the pill in its current form actually existed, or was just a theory.

...

But a lot of doctors who wouldn't want to strap the carbon monoxide mask on people, and start the machine, would be less averse to prescribing a large dose of morphine. They'd need some assurance, though, that the patient was really going to use it for the purpose intended. Probably a cancer patient in a lot of pain and with months to live, certainly is, but it only takes one, to sell it to cover his funeral expenses, and leave his family something, to ruin the doctor's life.

And more in there is nothing new in the world news...

The Plan B pill has been in existence since the 30s, in some form or another. Hospitals have been administrating it for at least the past 50 years that I know of, and often without the patients knowledge, much less consent. It's essentially a megadose of the contraceptive pill.It's part of post-rape care. A patient can certainly opt out of it, but that assumes they know that they are going to get it, and that someone actually explains the pills purpose. Which is not necessarily a given. Of course, if you are an ob-gyn's kid like me, you pick up the knowledge that taking three or four of your birth control pills does the same thing. And make you feel like unmitigated hell for about three days. But slipping it to a woman without her knowledge would be kind of pointless. You get a much smaller window than most people think. Probably because it's called the "morning after pill" If you wait till the morning to take it, you are going to be sorely disappointed with the results. Guys dosing women with the pill are very unlikely to get it in them in time. So really he is just making her very very nauseous.

I remember when the whole Dr. Kevorkian thing came out. My family is all doctors, so it was the topic of conversation for a couple of months. They were completely stunned that it happened. Not because they didn't believe in a patient ending their own life, but because doctors have been facilitating suicide probably since the dawn of medicine. So why on earth didn't Kevorkian's patients make arrangements back when they were more functional for an end plan? The thing with Kevorkian was that he had this machine that could be operated by a quadriplegic if necessary. Which is fine. Until he just started killing them himself, which does cross a fundamental line. But there were people with ALS, or cancer, or emphysema who were just wrecked by their disease, and had they asked their doctor a little sooner for pain management, they could have killed themselves without assistance. It's not like ALS guy doesn't know what's coming. Arrangements could have been made for before he was so incapacitated that he had to call in a stunt double. It really was the most peculiar thing. Hell, Lou Gehrig managed to end his own life with dignity back in 1941 (I think). Why people in the early 90s couldn't manage the same is beyond my ken. I think the first case of Kevorkian's was a woman who had been diagnosed with Alzheimers a year previously. Nothing about her condition required a death machine. She could have taken pills. So, I don't know what the deal was with these people, but a majority of them had no need of "assistance".

[RivkahChaya]

Apparently you have never met someone who was found by someone after taking what should have been a fatal dose of pills, and taken to the hospital for stomach pumping. An awful lot of things can go wrong with pill-taking. I know someone who tried taking pills when she was in high school, and what she could get her hands on at the time was her father's high blood pressure medicine, some codeine left from her wisdom-tooth extraction, and alcohol. She passed out, then woke up an hour later and started projectile vomiting. She lived for thirty more years, and finally took herself out with a gun.

Guns are messy, though. I have actually met people who have said they don't want to commit suicide that way, because they don't want to leave a mess for people to clean up, and a couple of people with HIV, back in the 1980s, who said they couldn't choose a bloody method, when their time came, and they hoped they'd find someone willing to give them drugs that would "make it happen."

The thing about physician assisted suicide, is that it always works. You don't miscalculate the dose and wake up. No one walks in on you before it's over. Someone is there with you until you are too dead to be saved, to keep the machine turned on, but then to turn it off. You don't risk the car engine dying after you pass out, and you end up alive, but brain damaged, or no one finding you until after the car runs out of gas, and by then you've also killed some small animals.

Also, while I realize that slipping a woman the Plan-B pill isn't likely to stop a pregnancy, especially because most idiots would crush it and mix it with food, you could end up harming someone who shouldn't be taking oral contraceptives. There are certain medical conditions that contra-indicate it, and then, if the woman went and got it on her own, and didn't tell the person who slipped it to her, and got a double dose, she could get pretty sick.

Like I said, the article I remember was mostly arguing against making it available OTC, and the writer wasn't completely informed, but a lot of people weren't back then.

Gawd, I remember back in the late 1970s, when people were so generally uninformed, that a lot of teenagers thought you could take one birth control pill the day of the evening you planned to have sex, and it would prevent pregnancy for that night. So they'd steal one from their mothers, and hope she wasn't counting carefully. Since a lot of women don't take the dummy pills (if they still have those; those "four periods a year" kind may not), you could not notice one of those was missing.

[Ally]

But can you honestly say, hand on heart, that this same mother's son would without any doubt still have gone out and attacked those kids without a gun to call his friend? If he had to do it up close and personal with a kitchen knife or his bare hands, for example, or from a distance with a box of matches?

And can you say, honestly, hand on heart that he wouldn't have? What's the point of speculation? People get mass slaughtered all the time by people who don't have access to guns. You can't outlaw one single item and say well this will prevent SOME deaths. It is proven that people will kill, like your citizens who build bombs to take out buses and light children on fire. So can you say hand on heart, that people aren't going to kill other people if we outlaw this one method? I can't DEFEND myself with fire, I can with a gun. I can't DEFEND myself as easily with a knife, I can with a gun. I will be damned if I will EVER give up my gun, regardless of what the law says. I refuse to leave myself helpless just praying that well if no one has access to a gun, they'll just decide murder isn't worth it. Because yeah, history has proven that to be factual. Nobody ever killed anyone until guns were invented.

But it's all about reasonable and unreasonable risk, and what can be done to try and lower the risk of any one child (or adult for that matter) having to face any of these life-threatening situations. That's why roads are gritted in icy weather, medicine bottles are made hard for kids to open and buildings are fitted with fire and smoke alarms and emergency exits. Thank goodness we don't just stand back and say "It sucks that people die in their cars and in fires, or leave their medicines lying about", but do what we can to lessen the chances of these tragedies happening. "It sucks that your kids may get shot in class today, or next week, or next year - get over it." Seems a tad harsh to me, but maybe that's not what you meant.

Yes but the interesting thing is, no one is sitting there trying to outlaw the ownership of cars or pills because some people are careless with them. More people die in car accidents and drug overdoses than by guns. SO let's outlaw cars and pills first, then we'll discuss guns.

I don't disagree with a lot of this in principle, but it's very unlikely to become a reality anytime soon, presumably because it would be too open to abuse and misuse by too many of the population. And there you have a fundamental difference. Nobody can apparently be trusted with something designed wholly to ease their own suffering and end their own life, yet so many are trusted with an inaminate object designed chiefly to inflict physical damage. It all seems a bit arse about face.

I do find it interesting that you apparently cede your belief in who can be trusted to others. I mean who precisely is anyone to decide what I can and cannot be trusted with when it comes to my own life. I don't CARE if it's open to abuse or misuse by members of the population. That hasn't caused us to outlaw anti-freeze and people poison people with anti-freeze. You don't even a license to buy it and yet, something like a suicide pill that could require, prescription, a doctor overseeing all kinds of checks and balances in the process, no, that we poor stupid humans are just too dumb to be trusted with.

We are trusted with two tons of metal hurtling down the streets at 80 mph but not a 1 pound hunk of metal.

The flaws in the logic of the "protection racket" are numerous. And see that's the difference between the British and most Americans. You look to someone on high to protect you from yourselves and decide what you can be trusted with and to defend your lives. I'll look to my own self to defend my own life and take it when need be.

[sdreid]

The anti self defense lobby loves to exploit these tragedies as their own version of the burning of the Reichstag plan.