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| Re: "Tonight, it's been a year; he killed the others here..." by Horrible Gelatinous Blob 01/08/2012, 11:22pm PST | ||||
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| You're making a couple of cognitive errors here, but I only have the time and the effort to address the largest.
One needs to differentiate between Bonnie and Clyde-style killing sprees and Luby/Giffords-style mass murderers. The former MIGHT be somewhat dissuaded by the possibility of the potential victims being armed as well. However, it's more likely that they'll rely on organization, preparation, and most importantly, hostages to defuse any thoughts of heroic gunslinging that might occur to an individual. The latter...it's understandable that these events have such an undeniable effect on the country's conception of crime. They're loud, splashy, brutal, and they leave an indelible mark on the communities in which they take place. It's human nature to try and look for reasons why and ways to prevent it from happening again in the future. The problem is that you're trying to impose order on a category of minds that defies organization. Mass murderers aren't interested in your material goods. For the most part, they're not interested in publicity or even survival. Their only concern is hurting as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Once they're out of people to kill in the immediate area, they almost always kill themselves. Arming the populace isn't going to do anything against a mindset like that. All it'll do is escalate the situation; if shooting a dozen people isn't possible, you'll end up with suicide bombers in the service of the voices in their head as opposed to Allah. What are the seven people with handguns in the crowd going to do against that, except possibly hurt innocent people? Mass murderers have no escape plan. They don't negotiate or bargain. It's nearly impossible to predict anything about them, except that their only goal is to kill as many people as they can. Once that goal is achieved, nothing else matters. Here in this country, guns are the weapon of choice. In other counties that aren't as militarized, it's scissors or an axe or a knife, and it's against populations least suited to defend themselves: schoolchildren, female graduate students. But the illness exists, regardless of gun ownership statistics, and the manifestation of that illness looks eerily the same across nationality, ethnicity, or creed. Gun ownership confers no actual added safety upon the owner or the people around him and it's the height of folly to believe any differently. If one really, really wants a certain individual dead badly enough, given enough time one can make it happen WITHOUT EXCEPTION. Don't confuse the ability to take the life of another with the ability to protect one's own life against potential threats, real or imagined. There are a number of excellent arguments for gun ownership -- the intent of the Second Amendment paramount among them -- but "protection against criminals" is not one of them. |
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"Tonight, it's been a year; he killed the others here..." by 01/08/2012, 5:49pm PST  You're comparing apples to olives. Israel is an openly religious society, of by 01/08/2012, 6:26pm PST Re: You're comparing apples to olives. Israel is an openly religious society, of by 01/09/2012, 8:39am PST New York has a higher crime rate than Vermont?!??!?!!?!?!?!?!?!? NT by 01/08/2012, 7:19pm PST Re: "Tonight, it's been a year; he killed the others here..." by 01/08/2012, 11:22pm PST Re: "Tonight, it's been a year; he killed the others here..." by 01/09/2012, 9:20am PST Re: "Tonight, it's been a year; he killed the others here..." by 01/09/2012, 9:58am PST |
