- The availability of those eeeevilll firearms
- The increasing prevalence of violent imagery in games and on TV
- The pressures of modern life in a capitalist society
Many people have feelings of low self-esteem and may mistrust those around them or even suffer paranoia. But they don't go on a killing spree. What makes the few that do, flip? Access to firearms is one factor. Guns are, fortunately, not easy to get, but if people have lethal means of causing violence close at hand there will be more violence. How many people would be killed if every household had a gun? That, thank goodness, is not the case in this country.You're not wrong there, Keith my old son. You're not wrong there. It's shocking that a newspaper would pay good money for that pile of twaddle.
An incident like this should make us question our values. We need to think about our exposure to videos and violence – does it make us immune to the effects? We see images of violence every day, and through repetition they lose their power to shock.
It raises wider issues too. We define ourselves through jobs, power and money. People are so driven they have no other sense of who they are. They can't go to the doctor or the priest, so they take a gun and kill people. It really is shocking.
Actually, you aren't going to keep that fee, are you?
Wouldn't want it turning you in a kill-crazed loon, surely..?
27 comments:
"What makes the few that do, flip? Access to firearms is one factor."
I didn't realise that the mere presence of a firearm increased the chances of a major psychological "episode". That is certainly a new one on me. Perhaps it's the lead?
How do morons like this feed themselves?
Now that actually is impressive. We're clearly all dissassociated, malcontents with no ability to distinguish between reality and fiction ready to go on a killing spree the minute we come across something we dislike or something - like music or movies - "suggests" we do so. Time for the happy pills and we can allbe carted off to a sterile, hermetically sealed and controlled environment where we can do no damage to one another or ourselves and life will have all the blissful intensity of tellytubbies watched through scrag-blurred eyes. . .
"We define ourselves through jobs, power and money."
Some people, yes. Other people, not so much. It's kind of up to the individual rather than society (which presumably equals the state in the mind of this idiot).
As for viedo games, I can hardly imagine elderly taxi drivers playing Grand Theft Auto on PSPs in between fares.
"We need to think about our exposure to videos and violence"
If Justified and Sons of Anarchy get taken off air to appease the righteous, I'll shoot Keith myself.
I'm very much a pacifict etc, but there is an observable pattern in the USA that the number-of-people- killed-per-maniac is much lower in states with wide spread gun ownership, because somebody just fires back and kills him.
And the number-killed-per-maniac is much higher in states with strict gun laws.
"I didn't realise that the mere presence of a firearm increased the chances of a major psychological "episode"."
It talks to you, Blue. 'Pick me up, take me out, use me...'
"How do morons like this feed themselves?"
Pretty well, I'd have thought, with what he must charge by the hour!
"We're clearly all dissassociated, malcontents..."
We must be controlled, for our own good.
Spotted this earlier today;
If you ever doubt the degree to which private gun ownership and the freedom to use those guns for self-defense upholds our humanness, just head on down to El Paso, Tex., where the murder rate is around 23 victims annually. Then lock up your gun in the United States and cross the border into Juarez, Mexico, where the natural right to keep and bear arms has long been suppressed and where the murder rate, at 2,500 to 3,000 annually, is startling.
Gun Control: The Ultimate Human Rights Violation by A.W.R. Hawkins
"It's kind of up to the individual rather than society..."
*sigh*
I've no doubt at all that people like Keith are working to overturn that, have you?
"If Justified and Sons of Anarchy get taken off air to appease the righteous, I'll shoot Keith myself."
You might have to get in line! Maybe the next spree killer will be one fed up with the bansturbators...
"I'm very much a pacifict etc, but there is an observable pattern in the USA that the number-of-people- killed-per-maniac is much lower in states with wide spread gun ownership..."
The difference being they are very much a 'firearms culture'. We used to be, but I think it's gone too far beyond that to help if the rules were relaxed now...
"How many people would be killed if every household had a gun? That, thank goodness, is not the case in this country."
No, but it is the case in Switzerland where there is a legal requirement for all housesholds to have a firearm. It's estimated that there are up to three million guns held by private citizens in Switzerland (population 7.5 million). I don't recall a huge problem with rampaging gunmen in Geneva.
We are all products of our genes and our environment. Human beings are just another of natures experiments. Nature has passed humans the gene ball and we have to run with it. There are no known as yet plan or rules as to how the games should be played, amongst humans there is argument as to which plan and rules should be adopted. Now amongst the rules and plans being presented one or more maybe will save the human race from ultimate doom. Nature does not care as another species will be given a run at being the dominate species if we fail. So squabbling over things like guns or no guns or personal freedom or less personal freedom and who is right and who is wrong must be decided on which best aids our ultimate survival. What is needed is some Darwinian genius out there to work out the rules and plan of natural selection for us to follow to our ultimate glory. Would it not be ironic if such a person existed and was shot dead yesterday by that crazed human whose defective gene lurking somewhere in his or someone else's body caused him to carry out those dreadful deeds.
"Spotted this earlier today.."
Wow! That's some difference, all right.
Not a statistic that you ever see bandied about by the MSM, though. Wonder why?
"I don't recall a huge problem with rampaging gunmen in Geneva."
Indeed. And all those cuckoo clocks, too. You'd think if ANYTHING would set someone off... ;)
He could have 'flipped' by only shooting himself, which would've barely made the headlines because there've been quite a lot of suicides this year.
"They" do need to look at the proportion of killings since the ban and bring in proper, clear, legislation permitting weapons and serious, statutory, punishment for those who abuse the rules. At the moment? Well, breaking the law doesn't hurt very much.
"At the moment? Well, breaking the law doesn't hurt very much."
Quite.
But then, if you plan to stick the barrel in your mouth when you are done getting your revenge on those who wronged you (and any innocent passers by), would it make a difference in these cases?
To make any difference we have to move our law enforcers away from the "public must be controlled" point of view.
That just leads to more rules, laws, guidelines, protocols etc to tie us down. Meanwhile the bad guys (you know, the ones that commit all the crimes) take absolutely sod-all notice 'cos (here comes the astonishing bit) they are bad guys! It'll probably come as news to our political leaders, but crims dont obey the rules, that's why they're crims.
So how about we take the "localism" slogan at face value? What's the most local unit in society? Well, its me, and each of you.
So, in the spirit of localism, why not let me defend myself instead of restricting me with all sorts of red tape and other crap? Let me (with training) own a gun to defend my home and with a bit more training let me carry my weapon outside.
Then instead of the public merely being witnesses or targets either for the local drug lord or for the next one of these nutters, we can actually be part of the whole Laura Norder system.
I thought the Indy line was that poverty causes violence? Now it is wealth. I wish they'd make their mind up.
Naturally, there would be fewer shootings in a country where the State confiscated everything you earned and gave you back a pittance to live on.
In Melbourne someone stabbed his wife set her alight in a petrol station
Another guy threw one of his kids off the west gate bridge
Nothing came out about Martin Bryant in the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 he is in jail never ever spoke in court .
Maybe multiculturalism , the loss of the structure of society, (very structured in Switzerland )the changing values as shown by television.
They use situations like this for entertainment then cry when it turns into reality
Or it could just be the voices in their heads
Beat me to it, Anon., about Switzerland.* Oddly, the Helvetian Federation doesn't show up in Nationmaster's gun crime figures. Neither does the UK. I wonder why.
As far as firearm homicides per 100,000 go the USA is 8th in the world at 3.6, between Mexico and Belarus. The Czech Republic (0.26), with the most liberal gun laws in the EU, is 27th on that list, behind Australia.
Nationmaster's omission of Switzerland is doubly odd since it claims its source as Wikipedia. Wikipedia's own page puts Switzerland on 0.58 (1994 figures). That would place it around 20th on Nationmaster's list, just ahead of Germany (0.46), but lower than Slovenia (0.6) and Portugal (0.8).
There's no UK figure, but Scotland (0.3) and England and Wales (0.2) are close enough that we can assume a national figure (taking into account that the figures date from NI's “troubles”) somewhere in between. So yes, our gun crime is lower than countries with more liberal gun laws, but it's also lower than countries with similar gun laws, such as France (0.44 per 100,000: almost double the Czech Republic).
It seems patently obvious from all this that the rate of gun ownership has bugger all correlation - at most, only a very weak one - with the rate of gun homicide. There are other factors.
*If you hadn't, this comment would have been considerably shorter. I wouldn't have bothered looking up the numbers.
"investigative psychologist"? Is that like the profilers who get it right in 2.7% of all cases?
The fact is that we don't have a bloody clue while he did it, and nor does Keith Ashcroft.
Sam Duncan,
It seems patently obvious from all this that the rate of gun ownership has bugger all correlation - at most, only a very weak one - with the rate of gun homicide. There are other factors.
I don't have a link to it, but I once read that if you took drug turf killings out of the US crime statistics, you'd have a similar murder rate to the UK.
Dodge City from 1870 to 1885 had a far lower homicide rate than Washington, Newark and Baltimore do today.
Indeed, Joseph, and another interesting point historically is that the US has always had a higher murder rate than the UK, even when our gun laws were similar.
But I also think it's daft to treat the US as a single entity on this when it clearly isn't. Those figures on Wikipedia, as I said, split the UK into three, despite the law being the same. It was obviously recognised that NI would skew the figures upwards. So why are the United States' 50 different gun laws lumped together as one?
What, no Global Warming angle?
Statements of the obviously obvious posed as expert are now so commonplace as to be, well er, obvious Julia. My only question is how do we get the tv fees?
Dodge City from 1870 to 1885 had a far lower homicide rate than Washington, Newark and Baltimore do today.
Actually Joseph, Dodge City had a lower homicide rate than Merthyr Tydvil did at exactly the same time, but nobody has made a movie called The Good the Bad and the Boyo, so you would never have known would you?
So let me see, nine paras of psychobabble and cockwaffle passing as wisdom, and two glib ones for excuses and solutions.
The asshole had planned to kill himself from the outset, so those first nine paras are almost complete drivel.
Cant see the perp being a big violent video gaming fan can you? That had nothing to do with it.
He was simply someone who suddenly flipped. It happens, it's tragic, but we just have to cope with it and mop up the pieces of people's lives left behind or injured.
Just been watching Question time, and to give them their due, the panel mainly said that we have the tightest gun control laws in the Western world, let's have no knee jerk "something must be done" reactions again.
Have to say I'm on the armed/polite side of things.
"But I also think it's daft to treat the US as a single entity on this when it clearly isn't. Those figures on Wikipedia, as I said, split the UK into three, despite the law being the same. "
There are lies, damn lies, and statistics...
"My only question is how do we get the tv fees?"
Indeed! It's clearly a nice living for some..
"Just been watching Question time, and to give them their due, the panel mainly said that we have the tightest gun control laws in the Western world, let's have no knee jerk "something must be done" reactions again."
That, and Mays' and the Cameron's statements, are encouraging.
For an interesting take on armed/polite:
why the gun is civilization.
http://munchkinwrangler.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/why-the-gun-is-civilization/
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