[cometobed]

The other day, in my paper, yet another shooting over there in the USA...is it common occurence there ?? it seems so to me, there's been quite a few of late...it doesnt happen here in old Europe, as guns arent easily available..
woulnt it be a good idea to make them a bit harder to get, especially assault rifles, who needs an assault rifle? what for?
too many innocent people pay a heavy price ...we're no longer in John Wayne era when it was a necessity..
any opinion on the subject..?
European

[DarknLadyJedi]

This should be in politics, but to answer your question the media hypes up anything it can for political agendas.

When the UK banned handguns they saw a massive increase for a short period in gun crimes. As it stands now they have about the same homicide rate they had before so it hasn't had any real impact on deaths. Meanwhile the personal violent crime rate in the UK has gone up to 4x the rate in the US.

Many European countries are not so anti-gun. Switzerland comes as a good example with almost no random mass shootings in spite of almost every household having a military issued firearm and ammunition on hand.

In the US in order to own an actual military firearm you have to have a very special permit which is both expensive and not easily obtained for criminals and mentally ill people. Most of what the media refers to as assault rifles are really nothing more than semi-automatic firearms that look like military firearms. Which is why during the useless "assault weapons" ban that happened in the 90's they did not address any function of a firearm, only the cosmetics.


And a final point, in the DC shooting a shotgun was used. Had the military personnel not been required by law to be unarmed chances are that there were plenty of people present with both the skill and training to stop the shooter, but they lacked any means to do so.

Unlike in many non-mass shootings where the criminal is stopped by an armed response from a legal, law abiding citizen who is equally armed. Such happened at Pearl High School when a student showed up and started shooting, an assistant principal ran off school property to recover his gun and then returned. When the student saw that someone had a gun he took off running. Even in the case of Columbine the students planned to murder the armed guard first, but when he returned fire they fled from him.

Most of these mass murderers are cowards. They choose targets that they know are defenseless, just like any other criminal. They don't like it when the person they want to intimidate, hurt, or kill fights back. That's why the shooter in Aurora Colorado drove past several theaters to go to one that had a very noticeable "no firearms allowed" sign. He didn't want to risk getting hurt by anyone he was trying to kill.

[cometobed]

I don't think you are correct in your figures...there's a problem in UK with youngsters stabbings, all to do with Drugs turf wars...but certainly, no mass killings like we hear on a regular basis in the US...
All the worse when it kids are the victims...
But if you think that it's all OK then fine with me.

[DarknLadyJedi]

My figures come from the UK law statistics, and they cover all violent crime. Including stabbings and rapes.

As for mass shootings, true we do have more than the UK, but banning handguns did nothing for lowering your homicide rate or your mass murder rate. They just switched to setting people on fire and killing them with other weapons.