Avoiding easy labels for political gain, but taking stock all the same.
It is extremely difficult to understand the rationale, if any, behind terror attacks. All terror attacks are the sick acts of deranged, if perversely lucid, people who feel impotent against the society they live in or they unwittingly fight for.…
Article comments
26 - Jordan Richardson
I didn't say you had, Irene...hell, the comment wasn't even addressed to you.
I don't get what's hard to understand here. A few of us are taking issue with the claim made IN THIS ARTICLE that armed campers would have been better off against the gunman. There's simply no way to know that and, what's more, it's kind of bizarre to suggest that things would have worked out better because they had guns. We're talking scared shitless teens and pre-teens, no less.
So there's your context. The inference is that if we arm them, they'll be safer. I'm not so sure. I don't want to take away the guns or negate amendment rights or whatever.
But where do you stop? Should anyone and everyone who could potentially be a target to violent crime (ALL of us, in other words) be armed to prevent it? Is that the perfect world?
27 - RJ
Dread:
Are you familiar with the Latin phrase "caeteris paribus?"
And are you aware that guns do not, by themselves, commit violent crimes?
I'll wait while that all sinks in.
28 - Irene Athena
And did I say anything about Jordan Richardson personally negating 2nd amendment rights? No, I did not. I said I was AGAINST their negation.
So we're all made up now, and I bow to your superior powers of hyperbole. :) Would've MUCH rather been talking about the War on Drugs, but nobody had much to say on that thread, and now I have to go offline.
29 - Glenn Contrarian
To all -
It's because not enough people are armed. Only when there's a gun in every preschooler's lunchpail will we truly be safe.
You know, this was almost precisely what my far-right Republican friend said? It wasn't about preschoolers, but he was sincerely saying that any student who wanted to take a gun to school should be allowed to do so. But he's not all bad - he said he'd rather see me as president than Donald Trump.
30 - Jordan Richardson
No, Irene, but surely you can see where I might have arrived at the conclusion that I needed to clarify my stance. You brought up the second amendment; I didn't. It's not all that complicated, really.
No, this isn't an article about the War on Drugs. It's about the Norway shootings...
31 - Giuliano Maciocci
I am sorry the majority of readers concentrated on the 'guns'; my main point was another (liberal agendas going too far). However, instead of quoting dubious numbers (statistics can only go so far without taking into account culture, education, ect.), I would like to draw your attention to two points: 1) declaring something illegal can only result in delegating to criminals its 'management' (same as alcohol during prohibitionism, etc.); they certainly won't be deterred by a ban, in fact they'll exploit it to their advantage and 2) the highest percentage of guns and rifles per citizen is found in...Switzerland! In fact it is mandatory; maintenance of weapons by the citizens is part of the obligatory life military service; that tells us quite a lot...(no big shootouts there that I recall).
Thank you all for your reading!
32 - Dr Dreadful
Are you familiar with the Latin phrase "caeteris paribus?"
No, but I looked it up, so now we're good.
But all things are not equal. That's exactly my point.
33 - Jordan Richardson
Yep, Glenn, I've had similar experiences with some of my friends and family members.
But as someone who lost a relative to gun violence (an uncle was gunned down over a property dispute), I'm having a hard time with the notion. I actually had another relative tell me that if he was armed, he would be alive today. It must be nice to so perfectly play out these events after the fact with such precision.
That's my problem with this type of thinking. It has very little to do with the guns themselves, as I'm not "against them."
34 - Dr Dreadful
my main point was another (liberal agendas going too far).
Any agenda gone however far is hardly justification for blaming the actions of a nutcase on that agenda.
declaring something illegal can only result in delegating to criminals its 'management' (same as alcohol during prohibitionism, etc.)
Quoted for truth. Just so we're clear, I'm not in favour of a gun ban, just reasonable gun control. It's a sad reflection of the tenor of debate in America that you lot can't even agree on what a reasonable amount of control is.
I opposed the handgun ban that was introduced as knee-jerk legislation after Dunblane for the very reason cited in one of RJ's links: it penalizes law-abiding gun users, not criminals or maniacs like Hamilton.
the highest percentage of guns and rifles per citizen is found in...Switzerland! In fact it is mandatory; maintenance of weapons by the citizens is part of the obligatory life military service; that tells us quite a lot...(no big shootouts there that I recall).
No, but IIRC Switzerland does have the second highest rate of gun homicide among the industrialized nations, albeit still some considerable distance behind the US's. Make of that what you will.
What Switzerland, in common with the rest of the industrialized world apart from the US, doesn't have is a pervasive cultural mentality that guns can solve any problem, any time, instantly.
35 - Deano
The other element about Switzerland is that little innocuous phrase obligatory life military service.
In short, the guns and military weapons are regulated quite effectively through membership in the Swiss milita - through proper training, proper storage, regular inspections, and controls on ammunition and weapon usage. These aren't saturday night specials tucked into someone's back pocket.
In addition, they aren't generally carried around everywhere (i.e. to a youth camp) as they are meant to be used in carrying out military duties.
They also don't give them to everyone. There are a wide range of disqualifing factors including criminal records, mental or emotional instability etc. People need to stop comparing Switzerland to the US, the two systems are very much not alike and using the general numbers to claim they are is ingenuous at best, stupidly ignorant at worst...
36 - Glenn Contrarian
One thing that the gun nuts refuse to acknowledge is that the majority of liberals and Democrats do not want a gun ban. I mean, come on! Gun-totin' Pandora's out of the box and she ain't gettin' back in, meaning that a gun ban is, frankly, impossible.
All most of us want is full registration of firearms, and many of us (including myself) want mandatory firearm safety training. Heck, even a majority of the NRA's members want full registration of firearms!
But agreeing to that would hurt the Right's fear-the-guvmint's-black-helicopters-a-comin'-over-the-ridge stupidity campaign.
37 - Cannonshop
"Heck, even a majority of the NRA's members want full registration of firearms!"
Citation on that one?
38 - Anarcissie
I want to disagree with the first premise of this article, which is that it is difficult to understand the rationale of terrorism. Terrorism is the only means of political violence open to the relatively weak (unless we count voting for parties preaching or doing violence, like the major parties in the U.S.) Terrorism can be very effective: Gavrilo Princip wanted to bring down the Austro-Hungarian empire, and he did just that by setting off World War 1. Osama bin Laden, or whoever constructed 9/11, wanted to damage the United States, and did so very effectively, not only by destroying the World Trade Center, but by setting off processes of imperial war and internal security which are still doing severe damage and may have, by now, bankrupted the U.S. financially and morally. The rationale of terrorism, then, is that you can do a lot of damage to those you conceive of as your enemies. Since identifying, objectifying, and struggling with supposed enemies is an almost universal human occupation, it's surprising that more people don't go in for terrorism either as political practice or just as a hobby.
39 - roger nowosielski
Ey ey.
40 - Igor
38- good point.