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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2007 : 15:45:02 [Permalink]
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Next time I talk to God I'll ask Her what Evil is. Seems no one around here has a clear understanding, and all the books on the subject are vague and contradictory.
Just a public service for ya... |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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JohnOAS
SFN Regular
Australia
800 Posts |
 Posted - 04/18/2007 : 16:42:49 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Dude
quote:
If the shooter hadn't had access to the gun, but had to resort to beating people to death with a baseball bat, the number of casualties would have been much lower before someone stopped him, or he had to stop to catch his breath.
True.
If he had, for example, pulled this in any class I have attended for the last couple of years... he'd not have had the chance (assuming he didn't kill me before I could react) to kill anyone else.
I've no doubt that some lives would be saved in the sort of situation you've described. My question is, would the number of additional deaths, accidental or otherwise, due to the increase in the number of people having convenient access to firearms outweigh this. I don't know the answer, but I suspect it would do more harm than good.
It reminds me somewhat of the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine.
Gun control is nowhere near as big an issue in Australia as in the US, and attitudes certainly seem different. I wonder how people who are generally anti gun control feel about the scaled up (perhaps far enough to break the analogy, admittedly) version, where any nation state should have the right to whatever arms they feel are appropriate to protect their interests.
I do agree with you, though Dude, that more sensible gun control legislation, and more importantly, better policing/enforcing of the same, would be a hell of a start.
As to the car versus gun as relates to efficiency for killing, a couple of factors probably weigh in pretty heavily.
Just consider familiarity especially as influenced by popular culture. Look at TV or Hollywood in general. Firearms are the preferred method for settling disputes. I'm not in any way suggesting that censoring movies will stop the problem, but it does contribute to the fact that, when some moron thinks "I think I'll kill a bunch of people, and probably myself", odds are firearms are one of, if not the first thing they'll think of.
There's also the perceived effort and effectiveness. I agree that a car is easier to get, and may well be a more efficient weapon with proper planning and execution. It will probably be perceived as a lot more work though, and most people simply wouldn't take the time to think it through and choose a car over a firearm.
Cars aren't (generally) designed specifically to kill people, firearms are. Fortunately, most violent killers aren't Engineers Gone Bad (now there's a movie), or even if they are, are in an irrational enough state of mind to still go with more conventional weapons. |
John's just this guy, you know. |
| Edited by - JohnOAS on 04/18/2007 16:43:51 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2007 : 17:44:52 [Permalink]
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Dude wrote: quote:
But this is reality. If you want a gun, you can get one.
In this case, that is the truth. Seung-Hui Cho had previously been commited against his will for mental problems. The gun control laws say he coulnd't get a gun. But he simply lied and bought guns (note the plural!) despite the law. How depressing is that?
Laws that aren't properly enforced are useless.
Dude also wrote: quote:
The best way to lower murder rates, and all crime rates for that matter, is the relief of poverty.
I couldn't agree more.
tkster wrote: quote:
The focus should really be keeping the students at VaTech in our thoughts/prayers/etc.
Yup. Although I could see this discussion inspiring a discussion about the specifics of gun control. However, no single tragic incident should guide our public policy-making, much less when we are still emotionally distraught and in shock over it.
bgal wrote: quote:
So far we have the blame going to…
The Secular Student Alliance just released a secular response to the shooting that criticizes the blame game. It's well written, I highly recommend reading: http://www.secularstudents.org/node/672
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"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 04/18/2007 17:46:23 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26024 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2007 : 18:11:50 [Permalink]
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| Cho's home is less than 3/4ths of a mile from mine. I drove past his street tonight, and recognized it from the reporting on his family being hospitalized for shock this morning. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2007 : 18:12:46 [Permalink]
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John said:
quote:
I've no doubt that some lives would be saved in the sort of situation you've described. My question is, would the number of additional deaths, accidental or otherwise, due to the increase in the number of people having convenient access to firearms outweigh this. I don't know the answer, but I suspect it would do more harm than good.
There are several assumptions in your statement here. Primarily that law abiding people who choose to own/carry a firearm would act outside the law.
Every time the laws regarding concealed carry are passed in a new state, or modified in a state, some fool always gets up and predicts disaster, armed shootouts in parking lots over a parking space, and so on. This stuff, obviously, never materializes.
People who seek a concealed carry permit tend to be law abiding people who intend to act only within the law, especially where the use of force is concerned.
Do carry permits change crime stats? That still remains to be seen. I have never read an article that wasn't slanted to one side of the argument of the other. Does a carry permit make a person less prone to crimes of passion? Doubtfull. Does it make them less likely to be an armed robber? Also doubtfull, because the person who seeks a permit was probably never going to be an armed robber anyway.
I can tell you this, the murder rate in FL has declined every year since the passing of the concealed carry law in 1988.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/flcrime.htm
Obviously I can't say the two events are in a cause/effect relationship, but the correlation is interesting. All violent crime has been on a decline for quite a while in FL.
But you can conclude that concealed carry permits are not responsible for any increase in murder.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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R.Wreck
SFN Regular
USA
1191 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2007 : 18:24:34 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Bill Scott:
quote:
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Originally posted by R.Wreck
quote:
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Originally posted by Bill Scott:
Wrong. God, as the creator of all that exists, is the only one who can define what is good and what is evil. Then we as the created, and subject to the creator, are judged by those standards.
Without a creator then evil, as Fility has put it, is simply in the eye of the beholder.
God is the one who by his own freewill gives life, therefore, is the only one who can rightfully take that life back, as well. And the reality is that God calls everyone's life back to himself. The death rate is still 1:1 the last time I checked so relax, we are all going to make it. God would eventually have called the life back of these babies and pregnant women, anyway. What was cut short for them was time. All of our lives are going to be called back to God at some point in time, some just sooner then later.
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Evidence please.
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Sure
"Because evil, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, and by this time you should know better than to get me started on something like this." Filthy
Bill, since you are being intentionally obtuse, or you are naturally dense (and it is hard to tell the difference), let me be more specific:
What is your evidence to support the claim:
"God, as the creator of all that exists, is the only one who can define what is good and what is evil."
What is your evidence to support the claim:
"Then we as the created, and subject to the creator, are judged by those standards."
What is your evidence to support the claim:
"God is the one who by his own freewill gives life, therefore, is the only one who can rightfully take that life back, as well."
What is your evidence to support the claim:
"And the reality is that God calls everyone's life back to himself."
What is your evidence to support the claim:
"God would eventually have called the life back of these babies and pregnant women, anyway."
What is your evidence to support the claim:
"All of our lives are going to be called back to God at some point in time"
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The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibliities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley
The Cattle Prod of Enlightened Compassion
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2007 : 18:25:34 [Permalink]
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Marf said:
quote:
In this case, that is the truth. Seung-Hui Cho had previously been commited against his will for mental problems. The gun control laws say he coulnd't get a gun. But he simply lied and bought guns (note the plural!) despite the law. How depressing is that?
Laws that aren't properly enforced are useless.
He had not been arrested. And his mental health hospitalization was one of those very temporary voluntary things. In FL two docs can hold you against your will for 72 hours for evaluation. If they keep you beyond that they need a court to be involved.
If Cho's doctors had insisted he be confined outside of the short term, against his will, he would have had a record that showed up on the background check. I'm pretty sure you have to be committed against your will for this kind of thing to show up on a background check.
If the girl who called the cops on him for stalking had pressed charges, had him arrested, he would have failed the background checks.
What is striking is that several of his professors identified him as severely disturbed, but there was no system in place (even after one of them notified the police) to get him some help.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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| Edited by - Dude on 04/18/2007 18:28:09 |
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Orwellingly Yurz
SFN Regular
USA
529 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2007 : 18:32:54 [Permalink]
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YO: Continuing the thread on Cho Seung Hui and his two guns that were so busy on Monday.....
But first, isn't NBC News being the good guy now? Yes, we need to know about people who massacre other humans beings, but just think how this will affect all the other Cho Seung Huis out there in television (wacko) land. My daughter, before she finishes school up in Michigan, may have to be wearing a bullet proof vest at her graduation. NBC News is now sucking up ratings like crazy and this means that their rates for commericials will be going up because of those numbers. Remember that when you see, for the one-billionth time, the hate spewing from Cho's mouth in his self-shot video. I saw Jack Ruby, on live television (not on tape), shoot Lee Harvey Oswald. The video and stills that came out today are tantamount to that horrible scene deep in the heart of Texas in the early 60's.
Now, to the guns themselves. We can argue back and forth, and have in this country for decades and decades; but what we must remember is: Just like NBC News' ratings with this Cho video, guns have mostly to do with making a profit. Do we really need to remind ourselves about how big a business it is to sell WEAPONS? (Just ask Dick "gfy" Cheney.) Those being weapons that have thermo-nuclear warheads as well as pistols that only can be loaded with six rounds like John Wayne and Charleton Heston packed in all those kick ass, testosterone-filled Westerns that came across our big screens for so long.
As some sage one once said, "Bring 'em on!"
Orwellingly Yurz (OY)
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"The modern conservative...is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith
If dogs run free
Then what must be,
Must be...
And that is all
--Bob Dylan
The neo-cons have gotten welfare for themselves down to a fine art.
--me
"The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights."
--J. Paul Getty
"The great thing about Art isn't what it give us, but what we become through it."
--Oscar Wilde
"We have Art in order not to die of life."
--Albert Camus
"I cling like a miser to the freedom I lose when surrounded by an abundance of things."
--Albert Camus
"Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes."
--Oscar Wilde |
| Edited by - Orwellingly Yurz on 04/18/2007 18:38:55 |
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2007 : 21:48:31 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by R.Wreck
Bill, since you are being intentionally obtuse, or you are naturally dense (and it is hard to tell the difference), let me be more specific:....
Not only all that, but it seems to me that Bill is pretty much saying that we all are going to be "called back", just a matter of time. So it really doesn't matter what happens, because God is in control.
Always wondered why Christians were so big on the death penalty and prisons - why not let God take care of it?
It doesn't matter what we do here. Just kill 'em all and let God sort it out, right?
And you thought us atheists were bad with our "no god, no morality" outlook (which of course we don't have but don't let the religious know that...) 
Oh, and that death ratio is wrong - counting Jesus of course, right? Oh and Elijah, and I think there were a couple of others that never died in the Bible too... |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2007 : 22:47:02 [Permalink]
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OY said:
quote:
My daughter, before she finishes school up in Michigan, may have to be wearing a bullet proof vest at her graduation.
This kind of dire, and ridiculous, prediction has been made by the anti-gun crowd for decades.
It is a breakdown of rational thinking on an emotionally charged issue. Just like the yet-to-come true predictions of FL turning into the wild west with shootouts a common occurrence after the passing of the concealed carry laws. And that one has had over 20 years to materialize.
In fact, in the first 10 years of concealed carry in FL, only 5 permit holders were arrested for violent gun crimes. ("More Permits Means Less Crime" Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 1996, Monday, p. B-5) Which speaks only to the character of the people who seek out a concealed carry permit, really, but also pisses all over the doomsayers and their predictions of crazy wildwest shootouts.
Responsible gun ownership and proper enforcement of existing laws are a big part of the answer to gun crime. Not senseless bans driven by emotional overreactions.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Orwellingly Yurz
SFN Regular
USA
529 Posts |
Posted - 04/18/2007 : 23:39:38 [Permalink]
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Yo, Dude-ster. My reference to my daughter having to wear a bullet proof vest is not a dire prediction. It is a rhetorical flourish used to demonstrate how ABSURD such events as the massacre of 32 innocent college students really are, particularly, in this case, when the gunman had already been deemed a threat to himself and mentally unstable, but still could go in to a fucking gun shop and buy two lethal weapons, each 30 days apart so he wouldn't arouse suspicion. If the NRA didn't ride Congress so hard with money and political threats, there may be better, stricter gun laws, and their enforcement more telling on any would-be perpetrators. As I said earlier, it's all about commerce in the weapons biz that makes it easy for these jack-offs to get sophisticated weapons that kill so quickly and efficiently that approximately 66 parents are in deep grief tonight. Give that a little thought, Dude.
I even feel sorry for Cho's parents and his sister, even though it seems they might have been a bit lax with their son/brother and his very grave problemo. Despite his mental malady, I have no sympathy for Cho Boy. But, if he were still alive this evening, I would stand strong for his NOT being executed. Some of us HAVE to set that example, even though it seems we're pissing in the wind when we do! I wish more Christians would join us in that effort. It would give more credence to their "genuine" grief for fetuses being aborted and not punishment for women who might be having more sex than they, the Christians, think is appropriate.
OY!
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"The modern conservative...is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
--John Kenneth Galbraith
If dogs run free
Then what must be,
Must be...
And that is all
--Bob Dylan
The neo-cons have gotten welfare for themselves down to a fine art.
--me
"The meek shall inherit the earth, but not the mineral rights."
--J. Paul Getty
"The great thing about Art isn't what it give us, but what we become through it."
--Oscar Wilde
"We have Art in order not to die of life."
--Albert Camus
"I cling like a miser to the freedom I lose when surrounded by an abundance of things."
--Albert Camus
"Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes."
--Oscar Wilde |
| Edited by - Orwellingly Yurz on 04/18/2007 23:40:49 |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2007 : 02:45:07 [Permalink]
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Just what the hell are the gun laws in VA, anyway? If what I'm reading is even close to correct, Cho most likely would not been allowed to legally purchase any firearm in NC, and most certainly not a pistol.
To buy a handgun in NC, you must go to the sheriff's office and apply for a permit. It can take up to two weeks to get it, in which time a quite stringent background check is done. You don't need this to get a long gun, but the state is serious about background checks with these as well. Cho, with the documented health problems he had, would have lit up the feedback like a Christmas at the Vatican.
Has any of the pathology come out yet? Any drugs involved?
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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| Edited by - filthy on 04/19/2007 02:49:14 |
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marfknox
SFN Die Hard
USA
3739 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2007 : 03:08:23 [Permalink]
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Dude wrote: quote:
And his mental health hospitalization was one of those very temporary voluntary things.
I wrote that based on what I heard yesterday on NPR News. I just looked it up to quote it and it seems that I misunderstood what I had heard. This was the paragraph in questionhttp://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9604204&ft=1&f=1001: quote:
A Virginia court order obtained by NPR shows that Cho was taken into custody for a mental evaluation in December 2005. The order declared Cho mentally ill and said he was an imminent danger to himself or others. After an evaluation, a "special justice" ruled that Cho "presented an imminent danger to himself as a result of mental illness," but not to others. The "special justice" decided that involuntary hospitalization and treatment were not necessary.
Actually, I'm wondering if NPR had it wrong yesterday and changed the story, because I distinctly remember them reporting that it was illegal for Cho to buy a gun because he'd been involuntarily hospitalized. Anyway, you are right. |
"Too much certainty and clarity could lead to cruel intolerance" -Karen Armstrong
Check out my art store: http://www.marfknox.etsy.com
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| Edited by - marfknox on 04/19/2007 03:08:50 |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26024 Posts |
Posted - 04/19/2007 : 04:42:54 [Permalink]
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| It's not you, marf. There were two stories on All Things Considered last night which stated that Cho was involuntarily institutionalized and so therefore he must have lied on the forms when purchasing his firearms. One story carefully explained that mental health records aren't in any sort of centralized database, and so sometimes such incidents will not be found by a background check. If NPR is changing their stories after the fact, then maybe it's time for me to get an iPod. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Baghdad Tech Massacre
