A terrible, terrible tragedy.

[Roland]

The French have tossed their government out on its arse a half-dozen times since the American Revolution. Seems to be a national hobby.

Americans? Zero.

And, last I checked, taking up arms against the government, Jefferson notwithstanding, is still treason in the USA.

-Jester

Edit: Apparently not in New Hampshire, provided you can demonstrate the patently impossible, that all other means of redress have been exhausted!

Just because we haven't utilized our freedom doesn't mean we should get rid of it. It was put in place to fight tyranny within our home. So far, I haven't seen enough to convince me that any tyranny found today can't be changed through civil practices. YMMV, but violence to me is a last-resort tool.

[Jester]

Just because we haven't utilized our freedom doesn't mean we should get rid of it. It was put in place to fight tyranny within our home. So far, I haven't seen enough to convince me that any tyranny found today can't be changed through civil practices. YMMV, but violence to me is a last-resort tool.

Half my point was that you *don't* have that right.

Nowhere in the constitution does it say you can take up arms against the government. That's in the declaration of independence, and I'm afraid that has absolutely no legal weight whatsoever.

Rebellion is treason in your country. Your government will, depending on the threat you pose, kill or imprison you for it, just like every other nation would. And they would be within the law to do so.

This is an entirely fictional "right". It's mythology, not law.

-Jester

Edit: clarification.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Angel' date='Apr 18 2007, 01:43 PM' post='127948']
Dear eppie.
Friendly advice: get out of this before you get hurt. I hear Pete coming!:P

No damage from this quarter. Revisiting all the gun arguments seems to me to be a dull proposition. Since nothing new has been said, and since Doc and Occhi (and others) are doing a fine job of stating our common viewpoint, I have little to add.

Let me point out that a suicide bomber can do as much or more damage without as much as a firing pin.

--Pete

[[wcip]Angel]

Here I was hoping for a smackdown...


:lol:

[Nystul]

Angel' date='Apr 18 2007, 04:43 PM' post='127948']
Nystul: I was replying to Langolier, the guy who posted right before me (page 3 of this thread). Sorry if my comments were unclear in any way.:)

Ah, I see it now. It would be beneficial to those of us using threaded view if you hit the reply button next to the "Quote" button of the specific post you are replying to, even if you don't intend to quote it. When you use one of the other reply buttons, you are replying to the original post of the thread.

[Doc]

For those who fight for it, freedom has a distinct flavor the protected shall never know.

[Doc]

Dutch

Seems to me that the Dutch should busy themselves by sticking fingers in their dykes...

Next time a super power rolls through Eurasia I am fairly confident that they will be begging us gun toting Americans to come save their dyke plugging asses. :lol:

I mean no harm. Well, not much harm. I like Eppie and can agree with some of what is said, but this gun debate rubs me the wrong way.

[TheDragoon]

Since the inception of increasingly harsher gun control laws, gun-related deaths in the city of Boston have increased over the years, compared to when gun control laws were (slightly) less circus-like.

What does that tell you?

Nothing, really. Just that both might have been trending in those directions over some period of time. Trends do not show a causality and there are certainly other possible explanations as to why there have been more gun-related deaths than simply looking at the gun laws. :)

Personally, I find fault with the school administration for not closing the campus down, and taking the first shooting more seriously. "We thought it was a murder-suicide" does not cut it with me. If it's a murder-suicide, where's the damn smoking gun in-hand? They screwed up, big time, and I fault them for that, and tell it to the friends and families of those 33 dead that you didn't take action because "there were too many people in transit to the school".

I think that Occhi shares my viewpoint on this issue. Given a single murder event and limited information available at the time, I can't fault the law enforcement and school officials for how they handled campus. Similarly, it sounds like tougher gun control laws (within reason) also seem like they would not have really helped, in this case. One quote from a coworker that comes to mind on this is that "'perfectly safe' is if you never leave the house. As soon as you leave your house in the morning, you are taking risks." Clearly, it is oversimplified (since external influences mean not even your house is perfectly safe) but the idea is that a more realistic approach to this sort of thing is "acceptable risk." If a single murder event usually doesn't lead to some greater problem, then perhaps it is an "acceptable risk" to let people go about their business rather than locking everything down just because of one thing that probably won't lead to further problems. But I digress...

The thing that I think could be faulted for the school administration is that it doesn't sound like they had adequate processes for sharing information about students that were worrying school personnel. From what I have read, it sounds like the shooter had a history of disturbing messages showcased in his writing. In addition, a number of his former professors and fellow students thought him to be "creepy" or some such. Yet despite all of the people who thought these things (and some even acted on them to try and create some visibility of a possible problem!) it seems like no action was really taken. Given the circumstances, it sounds like if there was anything that might have prevented this from happening, it would have been the ability of the school's community to recognize that there was a possible problem and to try and mitigate it.

Either way, I hope that schools (and other communities since this could very well have happened at something other than a school!) across the country take this as a reminder to look at what processes they have in place and ask themselves, "If we were given all of the red flags that there were in this case, would we have picked up and it and acted to try and prevent it from ever occurring?"

The saddest thing about all this? There'll be another, sooner or later. And another after that.

I definitely seems likely to happen again, at some point. This sort of rogue act is something that is very hard to prevent. But hopefully we (as a nation or people of the world) can take some lessons from this and try to take actions that can pick up on this sort of thing before it happens and try to prevent it. :)

[kandrathe]

So you agree you can't see beforehand if someone is going to use a gun for bad purposes?

Anyway, if you consider Holland as a tyranical state because we can't buy guns, I guess you are the one with the twisted worldview. Averageday Holland is safer than average US.

The weapon idea is the same thing happening with those massive SUVs. People (apart from having small male organs :D) buy them because they are supposed to be safer then normal cars.....especially when you are in them. But of course when everybody drives an SUV the advantage is gone....so what next? Everybody goes around in a tank? Anyway at the same time the death toll among cyclist and pedestrians rise, because you absolutely don't stand a chance when you are hit buy a 2000 kg car going 50 km/h (that is a 453683sqp/inch floz car going 363.474Mpfeetgallon per second squared). Bringing more deadly things in a society will never yield less victims. But because everybody thinks he himself is a good shot or he himself will never use a gun 'just like that' everybody things he buys safety.....this survival of the fittest is of course highly questionable.

Ok, SUV's... Nope, not going there.

VaTech... Yes, it turns out that this guy was identified and committed to a mental treatment center 16 months ago, being determined by authorities to be a danger to himself and others. And, somehow he was released... Geez, how could that have happened? The nanny state failed to protect the society from a known and dangerous psychopath. It took some example cases of heinous recidivism (e.g. a series of high profile pedophile/rapists/murderer's being released and within months racking up body counts) here in my State before the legislature implemented the possibility of lifetime commitment for the dangerously insane.

The lesson learned from VaTech... Psychopaths are bad for society. Ban psychopaths now.

[Thecla]

Having attended this dance a few times before, I had intended to sit this one out. ;)

But I just have to say something here.

Rudeness really isn't going to help. No thanks to all that decided to interject that. <_<

Yup: I just want to add my agreement with you here 100%. I have no problem with flaming clueless idiots, but reasoned and civil disagreement is another matter. The bullying, dissmissive, and insulting tone of a number of the responses in this thread (and others) is not particularly pleasant.

eppie strikes me as a saint (or, possibly, a cappuchino-drinking, freeloading, lily-livered european whose presumed lack of military training ill-suits him for the coming post-apocalyptic age, especially since his entire country is likely to be under water at the time; you can choose).

And those Americans that might agree that gun control is a worthy objective will get drowned out in this forum by certain frequent posters. ;)

Curiously, polls seem to show that the majority of people in the US support stricter gun control laws; but the people that oppose them are so passionate about it (whatever the cost), I don't believe it will ever happen.

[Rhydderch Hael]

Half my point was that you *don't* have that right.

Nowhere in the constitution does it say you can take up arms against the government. That's in the declaration of independence, and I'm afraid that has absolutely no legal weight whatsoever.

Rebellion is treason in your country. Your government will, depending on the threat you pose, kill or imprison you for it, just like every other nation would. And they would be within the law to do so.

This is an entirely fictional "right". It's mythology, not law.

-Jester

Edit: clarification.

Before we get into who's right and who's wrong, let's mull over an example. Ever wonder why Jefferson Davis was never actually tried, much less convicted, on the charge of treason for presiding over the Confederate States of America, even though he'd been indicted?

[Rhydderch Hael]

Seems to me that the Dutch should busy themselves by sticking fingers in their dykes...

The Dutch have no clue what you're talking about. The story was originally an anecdote written within an American novel.

[Doc]

The Dutch have no clue what you're talking about. The story was originally an anecdote written within an American novel.

I was speaking tongue in cheek about the dykes.

Occhi, don't snork Guinness out of your nose.

[Jester]

Before we get into who's right and who's wrong, let's mull over an example. Ever wonder why Jefferson Davis was never actually tried, much less convicted, on the charge of treason for presiding over the Confederate States of America, even though he'd been indicted?

No, actually. I know next to nothing about the American Civil War.

But just off the top of my head, I would imagine that, in the most tense political atmosphere your nation has ever faced, after a brutal war that many saw as a murderous reconquest, it might have seemed slightly impolitic to just hang southern leaders from the highest tree. An example of at least moderate tolerance does go a long way towards reconstructing the fiction that democracy has been restored.

You will note that the response to the seccession was war, and not a cheerful acknowledgement of the right for the people to accept or reject the form of their government. Rebellion was not then, and is not now, legal in the United States of America.

Except in New Hampshire.

-Jester

Afterthought: That was fun. Now to the issue at hand: Who is right, and who is wrong?

[Frag]

Yup: I just want to add my agreement with you here 100%. I have no problem with flaming clueless idiots, but reasoned and civil disagreement is another matter. The bullying, dissmissive, and insulting tone of a number of the responses in this thread (and others) is not particularly pleasant.

eppie strikes me as a saint (or, possibly, a cappuchino-drinking, freeloading, lily-livered european whose presumed lack of military training ill-suits him for the coming post-apocalyptic age, especially since his entire country is likely to be under water at the time; you can choose).

Knickers in a twist or not, someone who claims his opinion (no matter what support is or is not offered) is correct, to the exclusion of others, because it was he who said it, when not giving any indication that it was spoken in jest, has all the flaming coming to him that the official WoW forums, let alone the Lounge, can offer.

I:wub:ya Thecla, but... :D

Cheers,
~Frag

[eppie]

I suppose I ought to start one. All I could charge would be what I offer, which is two lire. ;) At the old exchange rate, of about 1700 lire to the dollar, I might make enough for a cup of espresso, if lire were taken anymore. Sadly, I don't think they are. Maybe eppie, who now lives in Italia, can tell us if he uses Euro, Lire, or both to buy his Barilla pasta.
Occhi

Oh mai....you really are not sure if Italy uses euro's?

Well 'we' do.........and 75 ct (or 3.847 dollarinchoz/ fahrenheit in the US) buys you a small cup of caffe (coffee has a very narrow pricerange set by the government)

[eppie]

There are certainly things that can be done to ATTEMPT to prevent this in the future. Most of them are tyrannical in nature. I for one refuse to succumb to that. Banning of all guns (hell, why stop there? Why not go for knives, of all sorts, as well? Screwdrivers? Hammers? Pencils? A sock? Anything that can be used to kill someone?) is not a solution. It is a knee-jerk, ignorant reaction to an overly abnormal occurrence. It's no better than saying "Give everyone guns and ammo, no matter age, criminal background, etc." People like you fail to see that, because you refuse to. Ignorance is bliss only for those who choose to participate in it.

You forget that luckily people have an internal 'barrier' before they kill someone. The more a scoiety evolves the higher these barrier are (I think many people could imagine killing someone with a gun, but not by strangling). Apart from the fact that with a sock the guy would still be on his first victim before police arrived, killing with a gun is 'simpler' in psychological sense.

And to come back to my bold statement-t get a reaction from kandrathe upon which he called me mr stalin.
We have a fact here of a guy that had a known suicide wish, and that was very visibly heading for a violent outbreak (known by police and counselors)...however he was able to without problems buy a gun. Now I know that probably this messed up individual would get his hands on a gun probably anyway.......but then it might just be better to remove all gun restricting whatsoever. If a violent suicidal maniac can buy one, who can't.

[eppie]

Seems to me that the Dutch should busy themselves by sticking fingers in their dykes...

Next time a super power rolls through Eurasia I am fairly confident that they will be begging us gun toting Americans to come save their dyke plugging asses. :lol:

I mean no harm. Well, not much harm. I like Eppie and can agree with some of what is said, but this gun debate rubs me the wrong way.

Don't forget that we are building new dikes around New Orleans as we speak.....so you gun toting americans won't drown before you can shoot each other :D.


I like you too Doc.


eppie

[eppie]

I was speaking tongue in cheek about the dykes.

A forget my previous post then.

Anyway at least we are allowed to do that with being sentenced to life in prison.:D

[Nystul]

You're talking a matter of degree, of scale. Locking down a city is no small task. It can take days to pull off effectively. Locking down a school, even a large one like that? Hours, within a single day.

What would it mean to lock down the campus? I see CNN using the term, but I have no idea what it even means. The campus is apparently about 4 square miles, including an airport and 9000 residents. Is this lock down simply a matter of canceling classes, or is it something that would require the national guard setting up a tent city in Blacksburg?

In any case, you have two people shot dead in the room where they live. The police are looking at it as some kind of domestic quarrel or something. And then a couple hours later, they find out that maybe they were wrong. Maybe the university could have done something better in that time. I don't know. You could clear the whole place, and the killer goes down the street and kills 30 college kids eating Egg McMuffins or breakfast burritos.