@jimnms, so in your own words, violent crime stayed the same, but mass shootings disappeared.

If that was the only outcome of gun control, wouldn't it be worth it?
Or is your response simply "whoop-de-fucking-doo"

Kofi, you've got something there with that closer: "Tasmania: Where rationality prevails over dogmatism."
Can't hurt to suggest it as new motto to the Tourism Industry Council Tasmania


Oh, and guns are only good for killing and only approved professionals should be aloud to look at them or use them- Professionals like police, security personnel, and those recognized as enlisted military. I'm too irresponsible to wipe my own ass much less make any decisions regarding my personal safety and happiness and the world is such a scary place I can't walk outside for fear of mass shootings.

Thank god the system will tell me what to do and how to do it and what i can do it with. Thank you, broken and terminal system, you make personable responsibility so easy!! It's like I didn't have to think critically AT ALL!!

Well, only one down-vote:

IMO Carey just pissed on what's left of any real career-The producers of Kick-Ass 2 seem to agree that he's not thinking clearly, not unlike some of the peeps on this banal thread.

If you begin with the Kool-Aid being served with semantics like "assault rifle" and end up on a video blog with about 5 videos published with any meat having to do with the recent whack-job mass-shooting, the bulk of whose active users are east/west coast U.S. and outside of the C.U.S....IS IT SURPRISING, that you have a skewed representation of attitudes towards free will relative to firearms in the United States?

I do see these bills introduced in states and nationally the writing on the wall to an eventual fascist future for the entire fucking world, and those who don't, deserve that future.

Carrey's schtick never did it for me after age 16, he's so off in the realm of some EST whack-job in interviews, (like some motivational speaker from a closed-circuit kid's show in Ottawa on at 6 a.m.) and now with this, why the turd even dishonors the memory of Stringbean Akeman by taking a jab at Hee Haw and the fine people of Nashville.

Fuck Jim Carrey, BIG BROTHER say's he's doubleplus unfunny

The inside of your head - wow, just wow.

I thought you guys linked videogames to mass-shootings? Now it's if they voted democrat? Really?

I can't remember the last time we had a mass shooting here but I certainly don't remember anyone saying "... and another thing - he voted New Labour. There you go!"

I've been looking but can't find it but the last 5 or 6 mass shootings were all done by registered democrats, liberals or their parents were dems....again I can't find the source but there it is.

Yes, there are many, many examples of responsible gun ownership. Nobody is questioning that, and I count many good friends as examples.

The problem is that our society does not just accept guns, it is obsessed with guns, it looks at guns with hungry eyes and it latches tenaciously to the false sense of security given by unbridled ownership. It wants guns in more variety, with more capabilities and in larger quantities than any sane citizen could ever use.

And this has effects.

These excesses find use in Mexico. These excesses find use in gang warfare, school shootings, domestic disputes, armed robberies and at least on a more personally felt level, these excesses reflect a value system of fear, mistrust and isolation that I detest.

Give me one example of a high capacity magazine being both necessary and properly used in self defense. I want you to give me an example of one person unloading more than ten rounds against aggressors, and doing so in a situation that legally warrants it and was necessitated by circumstance (freaking out and shooting rounds indiscriminately does not count).

Give me one example of government over-reach being suppressed primarily by personal firearms. I'll even let you look around the world and as far back as the early 20th century for examples - I think you'll find that armed internal conflicts tend to sway with the military's whims or with external support.

For each instance of high capacity magazine use, I will give you ten instances of mass shootings made possible in part by their existence.

For each instance of successful armed civic insubordination, I will give you a hundred examples of change being accomplished with nothing more than a pen, a voice or a peaceful protest.

The problem here is that though gun owners are frequently responsible on an individual basis, their overall view on the utility of these tools in our society is completely out of line with the reality of a modern world. This is what gun control should be about: diluting these fantasies.

I must admit this issue has me in a quandary. Gun free? Yet the criminals will still be armed. All armed? Yet running the risk of more mass shootings and indiscriminate murder. Speaking for myself, I would rather be armed than not. However, I am totally in favour of banning high velocity automatic weapons, high capacity clips, and certain types of ammunition (dum-dum etc.) There should be increased security checks, and maybe - apart from special circumstances - the limiting to one gun per household. These seem common sense measures to me, which could, hopefully, keep all parties satisfied.

"As of 2012, there are an estimated 2.5-3.7 million rifles from the AR-15 family in civilian use in the United States."

We've seen 4 mass shooting using these type of guns, that equates to 0.0001081081%.

It's a wasted energy trying to ban these type of guns. Just make it difficult to own these type of guns and ban gun show sales.

Lets be rational about this, it doesn't matter what type of guns people use, unless we control the type of people that are allowed to own guns.

@jimnms

I'll address by paragraphs:

(1)

The reason I suggested that you are implying that the US is more violent by nature is because statistically it is far more murderous than a country of its socio-economic development should be. Have a look at Nationmaster tables of GDP/capita and compare than to murders/capita in terms of where the US sits.

If we take the view that you are suggesting that we should simply reduce violence globally then that is a laudable goal but it would suggest that the US is abysmally failing at this currently. I happen to believe this reason is gun availability. I see no reason to believe this abysmal failure comes from gross police incompetence or any other plausible factor, rather the gun ownership and availability that sticks out like a sore thumb when you compared to other countries such as those in the G8.

(2)

I think that we would be both agree that there are more gun enthusiasts in rural areas. Many of those would also own collections of guns for recreation rather than merely what self protection would require. The article below cites a study from 2007 by Harvard that says 20% own 65% of the nation's guns.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/19/tragedy-stresses-multiple-gun-ownership-trend-in-us/1781285/

There is no reason to suspect that these people are any more violent than your non gun-owning folk. The issue is not so much ownership levels, but the availability that feeds a would-be criminal's capacity to carry out a crime.

While actual ownership levels might be lower, guns can no doubt be purchased for cheaper and within a closer proximity in densely populated cities. This availability feeds the likelihood of them being employed as a tool to facilitate a crime.

This is also incidentally a key misunderstanding of the whole gun debate. No one is (or should be at least) implying that recreational gun owners are the problem. It is the necessity for guns to be freely available to gun enthusiasts among others for them to enjoy this hobby that causes the problems.

(3)

Building on my above point above, gun control shouldn't be seen as a punishment. There is no vidictiveness to it, merely a matter of weighing up the results of two courses of action. On the one hand there is diminished enjoyment of legal and responsible gun owners. On the other hand there is the high murder rate I discussed earlier, which really can't be explained away any other way than gun availability.

Let's do a back of the envelope calculation. Australia and the US are culturally relatively similar Anglo-Saxon societies. Let's assume for the sake of argument that my suggestion is true. Referencing wiki here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

The homicide rate in Australia is 1.0/10K/year and 4.8/10K/year. Let's say that gun availability explains 2/3rds of the difference. So we're talking about a 2.5/10K/year increase. Taking this against the US's 310M population this represents 7,500 more deaths.

Now to me, the issue is clear cut. The lives lost outweight gun enthusiast enjoyment.

And it's not just to me. There is a very clear reason that the vast majority of developed countries have made gun ownership incredibly difficult. I can guarantee, at some point they have done this back of the envelope calculation for their own country.

(4)

You raise the comparison to cars. See my workings above. With cars, they obviously provide a fundamentally invaluable benefit to society. The choice every society has made is to instead heavily regulate them. The reason there is no outcry to impose heavy restrictions on them is because there already are.

- Being required to pass license tests.
- Strict driving rules to follow.
- Speeding cameras everywhere.
- Random police checks for alcohol.

Can you think of any further regulations plausibly worth trying with cars that could reduce the accident death rate? I struggle to think of anything else effective that hasn't already been implemented.

With guns there are dozens of options not yet tried.

- Rigorous background checks.
- No gun show exemption.
- Assault weapon restrictions.
- Restrictions of ammo such as cost tariffs.

The list goes on. Imagine if we lacked the regulations we do on cars and there was a NCA (National Car Association) that was equating requiring to pass a driving test to tyranny.

(5)

I don't think there's much irrationality here. The US is clearly more murderous than other G8/OECD countries. To me, Occam's Razor explains why.

As for the comment on focussing on tragedies than the large issue, see my previous comment. You're missing the point that it's not just the gun sprees that are the problem, it's the steadily high murder rate. Mass shooting are just blips in this.

(6)

I will have a read through this.

@jimnms

(1)

I don't accept that the US is a more violent country by nature, therefore to me approaching it by cutting down all violence as you say is not plausible.

People can wax lyrically about a gun and violence obsessed culture but as far as I'm concerned the pervasiveness of Western society means you can say that about just about any country nowadays.

Socio-economic conditions determine the rate of murder and all indicators show that despite the US having a high per capita income rate, it has a drastically above average murder rate.

The only logical conclusion I see is that the easy availability of guns empowers the ratio of violent people with a tool designed to liquefy people's insides resulting in this.

(2)

I agree that the media focus on mass shootings ignores the wider issue. It is true however that mass shootings are certainly more common in the US that in equally highly developed countries so that mere fact is still newsworthy. The significantly higher murder rate of the US to any other developed country should be the issue but nobody seems to ever talk about it from the snippets I see.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

You mention China. Mass murder sprees certainly can happen in any country regardless of gun regulation. Nothing will stop the occasional delusion but resourceful individual from improvising but it stands to reason that looking at the wider trend, despite China being drastically less developed it's murder rate per capita is 20% of the US.

I love how Jon points out that we are a nation of overreactors while at the same time he too is overreacting (along with the rest of the media). Guns are used in less than 10% of violent crime, yet that's all the media is concerned about. Jon and the media are both overreacting about so called assault rifles as well. Only 3% of crimes are committed with any type of rifle, and "assault rifles" are only a small sub-category of rifles. Why is the media only focusing on less than 10% of violent crimes (those that only involve guns), and why put so much of that focus on the least used type of gun to commit violence? Mass shootings barely make up 0.1% of all murders, yet it gets constant media coverage for weeks after it happens. If we do something to cut down on ALL violence, gun violence will also drop.

Jon also gets a lot of his "facts" wrong. The CDC has an average (1999-2010) gun homicide rate of 12,807 per year and an average accidental gun death of 758 per year, that doesn't add up to 30,000. There is no epidemic of gun violence either. Violence, including gun violence has been on a steady decline every year.

He was almost about to make a good point about gun control with the comparison to drunk driving. Drunk driving deaths were reduced through common sense laws, stricter sentences for drunk driving offenders and educating the public, not by banning alcohol or cars, or imposing ridiculous limits on cars like reducing the size of fuel tanks so drunk drivers would have to stop and refuel more often. When has banning anything ever solved a problem? We tried that with alcohol already, it didn't work. Drugs are illegal, and hows that war on drugs going? I don't use drugs, but I'm all for legalizing and regulating them. It's our generation's prohibition and it needs to end because all it's doing is causing more crime than it's preventing.

The argument that muskets were all that was available when the constitution was written is ridiculous. When the constitution was written they also didn't have radio, TV or the internet, so should we limit free speech and freedom of the press to only newspapers and soap boxes?

I'm willing to have a common sense discussion on how to reduce not just gun violence but all violence, but I'm waiting for the "anti-gun" side to show up with some common sense instead of fear and ignorance.

Guns are already highly regulated, but I'm not opposed to any new regulation as long as it will keep guns from criminals, include harsher punishment for criminal use of guns, and doesn't put any added burden on responsible gun owners. The current legislation being cooked up (what little has been revealed so far) is completely insane.

And by the way (since Jon brought up Mr. Belding), in 1997 at the Pearl, MS high school, it was the school's assistant principle with a gun that stopped the shooter. This was reported only in local papers. Only one national media network covered it, NBC, they mentioned it only twice, and then it was forgotten. Under the law the assistant principal was considered a criminal for having a gun in a gun free zone, yet if he didn't have his gun in his car that day to stop the shooter, the shooter would have been able to carry out his plan to drive to the junior high and kill more students while police were responding to the high school.

Yes because when I'm so angry with someone that I want to MURDER them the first thing I think about is how to properly detach myself from the situation so I can go through with it.

I really don't my MURDER to be personal.

Maybe you would be considered right if this was some sort of mass shooting but it wasn't. So get your facts straight.

This video contains disingenuous information. Those statistics are completely false.

@chingalera It's working a lot better than the current USA situation. Here's a few legitimate facts relating to the content in that video.

1. You can still buy guns (pistols, rifles, shotguns), just not the ridiculously unjustified mass human slaying variants.
2. It's better controlled with systems setup to decrease the chance of consistently unstable minds getting hold of guns of any type.
3. Gun homicides were increasing leading up to the gun control (1996), from that peak to now, it's about a 59% drop.
4. 1996-2006 about 65% drop in gun suicides.
5. Robberies involving guns dropped significantly.
6. There was no increase in home invasions.
7. In the 10 years leading up to the gun control there were 11 mass shootings.. since gun control went into affect, there have been 0.

Homicide weapon statistics (image): Guns vs Knives from 1989/90 to 2006/7
Quick answer: 50% drop for guns, 30% rise for knives
http://aic.gov.au/statistics/homicide/weapon.html

"A 2011 letter published in the British Medical Journal by Simon Chapman, a professor of public health from the University of Sydney, observed that the U.S. had 14.4 times the population of Australia but 141 times as as many deaths from firearms in 2008 as Australia and 238 times the rate of firearms-related homicide."
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/2012/12/20/gun-control-searching-down-under-for-change-to-believe-in/
If the current ratio's are even remotely similar to this quote, then Americans can't say jack about the Australian statistics.

@charliem Good links mate.

Upvote for the 'Lies' tag.

There was a gun buy-back, it wasn't a confiscation.

It was a while ago but I don't remember anyone promising that the revised regulations were going to make the country crime-free, they were specifically aimed at reducing mass shootings. In fact, since mass shootings are rare, they probably saved more lives by reducing suicides.

doesn't anyone else think that stopping mass shootings is just a side benefit of working to fix the larger problem? VERY few people in the US are killed in mass shootings (compared to other sources of death), but we do have millions of people obsessed with implements of death. The collection of tools for killing is one of the biggest hobbies in this country. That's messed up! We are messed up.
And on a deeper level, why are we more prone to random mass murder than are other populations? Only a few may do it.. but do you really think that the underlying sickness is limited to those that act on it in this way? These people are mushrooms poking out here and there from the huge rotten mass underneath.