Mass Shootings


Traveler
 Share

Recommended Posts

Guest Mores
47 minutes ago, MarginOfError said:

I'm afraid I can't find my way back to the study for the 3% statistic. All links seem to go back to this Guardian piece. If anyone can come up with the article written by Harvard and Northeastern, it would likely be an interesting read.

Yes, I'd be interested as well.

Quote

The highlight, though, is that 3% of Americans own more than half of the guns, at a whopping 17 each average (probably the mean, but the median would be more informative here). But the remaining 30% of Americans who are gun owners top off between 1 and 4. I imagine that probably matches up well with your experience. Namely, that for every "super gun collector" you know, there are about ten more that are more modest owners.  

Yes, I can buy that.  1 to 4.  I, myself, have 6.  If we were to draw a hard line between "gun owner" and "gun collector" (although they obviously overlap) I'd put my thumb estimate at around 12 or so.  So, the 17 would be considered a collector.

Quote

You're probably right, thought, that the 3% may not be the most interesting group to study in this idea. The other 30% are probably where more of the interesting stuff happens.

I'll also whole heartedly agree that owning a gun is not indicative of a violent personality. 

:thumbsup:

Quote

Most of my interest in what I discuss is trying to broaden the discussion.  Focusing on mass shootings won't address the problem. Banning guns won't address the problem. As I said previously, I'm willing to support gun control measures that stop the bleeding. Put more accurately, I'm willing to consider measures that reduce the efficiency with which a civilian gun owner can kill others.

I'm somewhere in that ballpark.

Quote
  • New firearms sales of firearms with barrels longer than six (or eight, or ten, you get the concept) inches must take a manual action to reload the chamber (lever action, pump, etc--effectively, semi automatics are only available in small arms)

That would mean that a handicapped person would not be able to operate such a weapon.  And with a person who is proficient, it would not significantly reduce their rate of effective fire.

Quote
  • Prohibit the sale to civilians of certain ammunitions that are designed to pierce armor, and perhaps other impact actions that maximize damage on impact. (this one I'd have to study more, because I know there are some valid hunting rounds, such as hollow points, that shouldn't get included on this)

I'd think that hollow points are justified for home self-defense.  An average FMJ is not as deadly as one might think.  Sure, it will do damage,  but there are many data points indicating that the assailant will be able to continue attacking (and possibly kill the homeowner) before succumbing to such wounds.  JHP will give the homeowner an advantage in that situation.

Quote
  • Prohibit the sale to civilians of military grade body armor.

I'm not sure what this has to do with it.  Please expound a bit on why this would be important to you.

Quote

Again, these don't solve a lot of deaths. But the most egregious cases (Newtown, Las Vegas, Dayton) would have smaller death totals. And the focus of these kinds of restrictions ought to be and blunting the most extreme cases.

I don't see how any of these measures would have helped much (or at all).  Explain.

Quote

The proposals that I think may have more of an impact are things like a better system for denying gun ownership (even if temporarily) to those who exhibit violent tendencies. This one is really hard, but has the tendency to have a lot of impact.  

Slippery Slope here.  My fear here is government overreach.  It would be all too easy to label virtually anyone as having violent tendencies.  If you even once exhibited losing your temper, then you could have your right to defend yourself revoked.  And just listen to the rhetoric today.  Feminists today think every man is a rapist.  And the "all women must be believed" philosophy is weakening any politician's resistance to that argument.

Quote

The bigger problem we have is that one side of the debate is screaming "gun are bad. Get rid of them" without any comprehension of the nuances of urban vs. rural gun ownership, and the factors that drive people to use their guns.

Agreed.

Quote

And on the other side you've got people screaming "but big guns are fun!" (I'll trade in that fun if it saves 10 lives per year--I've got a low bar, personally)

I don't know ANYone who has said that -- even in jest.  I can believe some people saying it in jest.  But if you sat them down and asked them seriously, "If you giving up some fun would mean that you could save 10 people's lives, would you give it up?" you know they'd say yes.  In a literal sense, they'd probably shift to a more substantive argument.  But the "fun" aspect is not a part of the debate.

Quote

and "but how will I lead my revolt against the government" (you won't. Even with your big guns, you won't). 

We disagree on this one.  And I don't find any argument along these lines persuasive when, at the same time, you're decrying the "white supremacist uprising".

Quote

Or you've got people that scream "personal protection" and are in complete denial about how infrequently the things get used for that purpose.

I'm rambling now. I'm frustrated. Not necessarily with you, but in general.

Yes, the statistic is low.  But we can also make the same argument against nukes or military.  We have a WHOLE LOT OF NUKES in this world.  How often do they ever get used?  But remember that merely having them is a deterrent.  They don't have to be used in a deadly fashion. 

Haven't you heard stories of people in the process of breaking in and they hear the action of a shotgun?  What do they do?  Proceed with entry and get shot?  No, they leave.  I've heard from two individuals who found themselves in that situation.  And I've heard about a dozen hearsay stories of something similar.  The would be criminals leave.

Unfortunately there are no statistics kept on that of which I'm aware.  And how accurate could they be?

Then there are burglars who say that if they believe the homeowner has a gun, they will probably not bother.  They make a priority of those that don't have guns.  Then they will go to the 'unknown' houses.  But they really avoid the ones where they know they have guns.  That's just common sense.  At least it was when I was growing up.  This was from a police presentation at my high school.  That's what they told us.

And let's not forget the old adage, "An armed society is a polite society."  

Edited by Mores
Link to comment
Share on other sites

@MarginOfError, what is your reasoning for all the seemingly arbitrary regulations you approve of... for example, "barrel length of 6 inches has to be lever action", etc.  Why?  How do these regulations prevent someone intent on killing people from doing so while keeping people who are intent on saving people (or something else useful) not being kept from doing so?  Also, what's your reasoning for why you think that putting all these regulations you approve of will "save 10 or so lives" as opposed to no regulations?  Just wanting to understand your train of thought.

Edited by anatess2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Mores said:

That would mean that a handicapped person would not be able to operate such a weapon.  And with a person who is proficient, it would not significantly reduce their rate of effective fire.

Let's use Dayton's shooting as an example. It is reported that the shooter fired 41 shots in 30 seconds.

That amounts to 1.3667 shots per second. But since we're really interested in the how much time passes between shots, he was firing at 30 / 41 = 0.732 seconds per shot. We'll take this rate as our baseline.

Now let's assume a shooter is really proficient and can rechamber a round through some manual action and get back to the trigger and fire again by only adding another 0.25 seconds. The total time between shots is then 0.982 seconds.  This translates to 1.01 shots per second, or 30.55 shots per 30 seconds.  

The relative efficiency of adding just 0.25 seconds per shot is 30.55 / 41 ~ 0.75 = 75%.  By extension, the relative death total goes from 9 to 6.7.  Adding just 0.25 seconds has the potential to prevent two lost lives.

If the shooter isn't quite that good, and it takes 0.5 seconds to rechamber a round, the relative efficiency goes down to 59%, and the relative death count is 5.3; 3 to 4 prevented lost lives.

So I guess the question is if a fraction of a second is worth one or two lives to you?

Quote

I'd think that hollow points are justified for home self-defense.  An average FMJ is not as deadly as one might think.  Sure, it will do damage,  but there are many data points indicating that the assailant will be able to continue attacking (and possibly kill the homeowner) before succumbing to such wounds.  JHP will give the homeowner an advantage in that situation.

I'll admit that I'm a little out of my realm of experience here.  And I'm open to being educated on the finer points (in fact, I should probably PM a few of you for input, as I very nearly went out and purchased a hand gun this past weekend--but that's another matter entirely). But I think it's fair to ask if there are types of ammunition that are beyond the scope of standard self defense and need not be in the hands of civilians.

The general premise I'm aiming for, though, is a small bullet can do a surprising amount of damage. If you cut down on some of the more gruesome ammunition, some of the deaths we are seeing may become survivable injuries instead. 

Quote

I'm not sure what this has to do with it.  Please expound a bit on why this would be important to you.

For no other reason than to make it easier for law enforcement (or the proverbial good guy with a gun) to bring a shooter down.

Quote

Slippery Slope here.  My fear here is government overreach.  It would be all too easy to label virtually anyone as having violent tendencies.  If you even once exhibited losing your temper, then you could have your right to defend yourself revoked.  And just listen to the rhetoric today. 

This is one I don't think gets resolved easily. But I want to have the discussions, and it's worth trying to work through the issues. 

I mean, consider for a moment that we had a kid who had written kill lists on a bathroom wall in high school permitted to buy firearms. There comes a point that when someone tells us who they are, we should believe them. Why don't we believe them until they've actually gone on to kill?

Quote

Feminists today think every man is a rapist.  And the "all women must be believed" philosophy is weakening any politician's resistance to that argument.

You should be careful with your characterizations. I spend more time with feminists (being one myself) than I do with most other can't give you a single example of one I know that believes this. Are there some out there that do...sure.  But they're cracked.

Quote

Agreed.

I don't know ANYone who has said that -- even in jest.  I can believe some people saying it in jest.  But if you sat them down and asked them seriously, "If you giving up some fun would mean that you could save 10 people's lives, would you give it up?" you know they'd say yes.  In a literal sense, they'd probably shift to a more substantive argument.  But the "fun" aspect is not a part of the debate.

This is literally the thing that I am told anytime I have this discussion with people where I live.  I ask, "but why do you need an assault rifle? What can it do that your other firearms can't?" And the most common response is, "but they're so much fun!" (a statement I don't disagree with, by the way, just not compelling to me)

Quote

We disagree on this one.  And I don't find any argument along these lines persuasive when, at the same time, you're decrying the "white supremacist uprising".

One key difference here.  I'm not calling for a violent solution to the white supremacist uprising. And anyone who proposes such (including the Dayton shooter), shouldn't be given a weapon either. I don't want an arms race, but that's essentially what anti-government militants are advocating.

Quote

Yes, the statistic is low.  But we can also make the same argument against nukes or military.  We have a WHOLE LOT OF NUKES in this world.  How often do they ever get used?  But remember that merely having them is a deterrent.  They don't have to be used in a deadly fashion. 

I'd be content to get rid of the nukes. Mutually assured destruction was a psychotic strategy as a foreign policy  matter. I consider it psychotic in terms of home and personal defense.

Quote

Haven't you heard stories of people in the process of breaking in and they hear the action of a shotgun?  What do they do?  Proceed with entry and get shot?  No, they leave.  I've heard from two individuals who found themselves in that situation.  And I've heard about a dozen hearsay stories of something similar.  The would be criminals leave.

Unfortunately there are no statistics kept on that of which I'm aware.  And how accurate could they be?

I'd be willing to bet this doesn't happen very often at all. Largely because I don't think it's all that common for burglaries to happen when people are home to begin with. 

There's also a difference between rural and urban areas here.  When I lived in the Cleveland area, police response time to any call was less than two minutes. Stomping on the floor or announcing (from another room) that you've called the police was enough to make and burglar flee, because the thing that is most valuable to a burglar is anonymity. They don't want  confrontation. 

Rural areas are another matter, however.  I have friends here who can expect 45 minutes to an hour for police to respond to a call. All of them keep firearms of some sort nearby, because announcing a call to the police isn't necessarily threatening enough. 45 minutes is plenty of time to knock of the occupant and take a few high valued things.

Quote

Then there are burglars who say that if they believe the homeowner has a gun, they will probably not bother.  They make a priority of those that don't have guns.  Then they will go to the 'unknown' houses.  But they really avoid the ones where they know they have guns.  That's just common sense.  At least it was when I was growing up.  This was from a police presentation at my high school.  That's what they told us. 

I guess I need to look up statistics on burglaries and how many occur when the residence is occupied. I'd be surprised if the majority weren't in unoccupied residences.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, MarginOfError said:

I spend more time with feminists (being one myself) than I do with most other can't give you a single example of one I know that believes this.

If you lived around Seattle, you would know plenty. The idea that this is merely some lunatic fringe argument is untrue, unless you want to consider the entire Left Coast the "lunatic fringe". (In which case, I'll agree wholeheartedly with the "lunatic" part. But frankly, people like me are more the "fringe" here than the women-are-incapable-of-lying set.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, MarginOfError said:

I ask, "but why do you need an assault rifle? What can it do that your other firearms can't?"

Protect me from an oppressive tyrannical government who is armed with the same.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Mores
4 hours ago, MarginOfError said:

Let's use Dayton's shooting as an example. It is reported that the shooter fired 41 shots in 30 seconds...

So I guess the question is if a fraction of a second is worth one or two lives to you?

Speaking as one numbers expert to another:  Spending our entire day looking at numbers, it is too easy to believe that numbers will tell you everything.  Maybe.  But you have to look at the right numbers.  And I don't mean correct or incorrect.  More on that below.

Quote

I'll admit that I'm a little out of my realm of experience here.  And I'm open to being educated on the finer points (in fact, I should probably PM a few of you for input, as I very nearly went out and purchased a hand gun this past weekend--but that's another matter entirely). But I think it's fair to ask if there are types of ammunition that are beyond the scope of standard self defense and need not be in the hands of civilians.

I can understand someone a little to the left of center being out of their element with firearms.  Here's what I'm talking about: If you've ever fired a weapon at that rate, you know how inaccurate you're going to be.  It is only because it was a crowded area where no one but police had guns that people were so easily hit.  And when you're in that situation, a pistol will kill just as many people.  So, why even offer that this only applies to long guns?

Quote

The general premise I'm aiming for, though, is a small bullet can do a surprising amount of damage. If you cut down on some of the more gruesome ammunition, some of the deaths we are seeing may become survivable injuries instead.

If you ever saw the movie "Monster" (Charlize Theron).  The real life story upon which it was based... the woman used a .22 pistol for all those murders.  While caliber can make an impact, it is a simple truth that if you want to kill someone, you can do it with any type of round.

Quote

For no other reason than to make it easier for law enforcement (or the proverbial good guy with a gun) to bring a shooter down.

The Dayton shooter had a bullet proof vest and the cops took him down within 10 seconds of engaging him.

Quote

This is one I don't think gets resolved easily. But I want to have the discussions, and it's worth trying to work through the issues. 

Yup.

Quote

I mean, consider for a moment that we had a kid who had written kill lists on a bathroom wall in high school permitted to buy firearms. There comes a point that when someone tells us who they are, we should believe them. Why don't we believe them until they've actually gone on to kill?

All part of the discussion.

Quote

You should be careful with your characterizations. I spend more time with feminists (being one myself) than I do with most other can't give you a single example of one I know that believes this. Are there some out there that do...sure.  But they're cracked.

Bella Abzug comes to mind.  Whether you think she's cracked or not, masses upon masses of women practically worship her.  Gloria Steinam said she's her role model.  Barbra Streisand, Shirley MacLaine, Hillary Clinton, Lily Tomlin, Nancy Pelosi, Gloria Steinem, Maxine Waters, Phil Donahue, Marlo Thomas, Charles Rangel, David Dinkins and Renée Taylor all sang praises to her in her documentary.

Quote

This is literally the thing that I am told anytime I have this discussion with people where I live.  I ask, "but why do you need an assault rifle? What can it do that your other firearms can't?" And the most common response is, "but they're so much fun!" (a statement I don't disagree with, by the way, just not compelling to me)

They are fun.  That doesn't mean that in their heart, they aren't willing to give it up if it can be shown to reduce mass killings.  I would think that 99.99% of them would say they'd be willing, if it could be shown.

We do agree that "but they're so much fun" is not a compelling argument.  "It's so much fun" to do a lot of things that we're not supposed to do.

I want to advise you on the use of the word "assault rifle".  The Dayton shooter did NOT have an assault rifle.  An AR-15 is NOT an assault rifle.  It has a "pistol grip stock".  All that does is:  It makes it look "scary".  Functionally, many people feel that it is more comfortable.  Personally, I don't see it.  I have a rifle with a pistol grip and I hate it.  I'd like to switch it out for a straight stock.  But it costs more to replace the stock than the rifle cost.  So, I'm kinda stuck with it.

Quote

One key difference here.  I'm not calling for a violent solution to the white supremacist uprising. And anyone who proposes such (including the Dayton shooter), shouldn't be given a weapon either. I don't want an arms race, but that's essentially what anti-government militants are advocating.

I think you missed the point:  You said that we are not going to be able to rebel against a tyrannical regime if it were (God forbid) to ever take over the US government.  How can you say that an uprising would not be effective when you yourself complain about how much damage a single person with a gun can do? 

Either

  • A few people can do a lot of damage when armed with a single gun each. OR
  • A single person with a single gun is not that big of a threat.

Which is it?

But... government is different than people...  Right?  No. Not when it comes to guerrilla warfare tactics in a civil war situation.  History has proven this time and time again.

Quote

I'd be content to get rid of the nukes. Mutually assured destruction was a psychotic strategy as a foreign policy matter. I consider it psychotic in terms of home and personal defense.

It's not about "mutually assured destruction".  It is about the criminal being afraid of entering your home because he doesn't know what you've got.

Quote

I'd be willing to bet this doesn't happen very often at all. Largely because I don't think it's all that common for burglaries to happen when people are home to begin with.

And why do you think that is?  They don't want the confrontation.  At the very least, it would mean that property may be stolen, but people (the homeowners) will be left alone.  Do you not find that to be a life-saving measure? That is what we're all after, right?

Quote

When I lived in the Cleveland area, police response time to any call was less than two minutes. Stomping on the floor or announcing (from another room) that you've called the police was enough to make and burglar flee, because the thing that is most valuable to a burglar is anonymity. They don't want  confrontation. 

Ahh.  We agree...

But that 2 minutes seems awfully short.  I've never heard of such response time.  I don't know how that could be logistically feasible.

Quote

We found it takes Cleveland police an average of 17 minutes to respond to priority 1 and priority 2 calls.

-- 2017 study

https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/investigations/news-5-investigation-reveals-slow-911-response-times-by-cleveland-police

Edited by Mores
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1). The Wikipedia article on defensive gun use (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use) suggests that statistical estimates range from 55,000 to 4.1 million per year.  Even the lowest range is almost double the 33,000 gun-related deaths per year.  

2). The social problems here run deeper than white men being in a funk over not ruling the world anymore.  

As it pertains to males and Euro-Americans generally:  these are the only American subgroups who are actively discouraged from taking pride in their ethnic and racial identities.  They are routinely turned down for school slots, scholarships, and jobs that are then given to less-qualified women and/or minorities.  They work longer hours at more dangerous jobs with less time off, and are then hectored over a supposed “pay gap”.  They support their own families, then are expected to pay extra taxes to support families created by people less prudent than themselves.  They pay a disproportionately high share of taxes in exchange for a disproportionately low share of government benefits.  They receive less health care than women, and their lives are shorter.  Their sons muddle through a public educational system run increasingly by women, for girls, where boys’ unique educational needs and interests are habitually pooh-poohed.  If memory serves, they are victimized by interracial violent crime far more often than they perpetrate it.  And sfter all this, they are increasingly told that they are the root of most of the world’s evil.

This is not a case of “equality’s a female dog and these snowflakes need to suck it up”; there are legitimate grievances here that appear to have no realistic remedy in the offing.  

3). As it pertains to Americans generally:  

In 2019 America, why shouldn’t people kill each other, if that’s what gives them their kicks and giggles?

God?  We killed him.

Respect for life?  Why?  Humanity is an accident of nature.  We already kill hundreds of thousands of infants a year, and in an increasing number of states, euthanize hundreds or thousands of old people.  

Ethics?  We are ethically and philosophically illiterate.  (I don’t mean this as a moral indictment, necessarily—we are just ignorant of the ethical and philosophical underpinnings of our culture.  That kind of stuff isn’t taught in schools anymore, if ever it was).

Respect for our national identity as Americans?  We have no national identity as Americans anymore.  Our traditional values have been converted to vices; our national accomplishments thrust down the memory hole or recast as blunders.  The closest we get to having any kind of collective experience is collective guilt for our original sins of slavery and racism and colonialism—and that only applies to some of us, naturally . . .

The hope for a better life for ourselves in the future if we continue to live prudently?  Nope—the “American Dream” has been squashed by a bunch of phony Marxist allegations about “the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer”; statistics about true social mobility rates and the behaviors that are associated with upward mobility are being studiously buried, and we aren’t allowed to tell large subsets of the poor that they wouldn’t BE poor if they’d quit doing stupid stuff—resulting in widespread fatalism and hopelessness, and augmenting a sense of national nihilism.

Family connections, and/or the desire to maintain and build a better society for our children?  Family structures don’t reinforce pro-social behavior the way they once did (respect your parents?  To heck with that—your parents are probably Republicans, and even if not—they certainly aren’t as woke as you!).  And children are a blight on our environment, don’t you know; the world is much better off if you just don’t reproduce.  Sha, la, la la la la—live for today!

Personal bonds based on real-life interactions within our communities?  Maybe that’s what our social engineers were counting on to prevent total chaos as they demolished “outdated” social structures and institutions that (in their view) were all that separated us from a collectivist utopia—but then the internet came along, and those personal bonds largely evaporated . . .

Certain political constituencies conspired to make the US less like its 1950’s self and more like Somalia and Colombia and Soviet Russia, and now they purport to be surprised that human life has become as cheap to us as it is/was in Somalia and Colombia and Soviet Russia?

In the modern sense, a “country” is by definition a group of people who have shared interests and values—a set of reasons not to kill each other.  And we aren’t a country anymore.  

We either rebuild ourselves as a country and as a people, or we’re going to see a whole lot more of these mass slayings—gun control or no gun control.  And frankly, the sort of fundamental cultural renaissance it would take to bind us together again probably isn’t possible anymore from a practical standpoint.  Chesterton’s fence was torn down again and again and again by people who blithely said “we’ll, you have to break some eggs to make an omelet”—and their proposed solutions to the problems they created, tend towards ever-increasing strictures on the personal liberty that our ancestors were able to handle just fine. 

Edited by Just_A_Guy
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Mores
16 hours ago, MarginOfError said:

I'd be willing to bet this doesn't happen very often at all. Largely because I don't think it's all that common for burglaries to happen when people are home to begin with. 

I didn't really question that statement.  But...

8 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

1). The Wikipedia article on defensive gun use (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use) suggests that statistical estimates range from 55,000 to 4.1 million per year.  Even the lowest range is almost double the 33,000 gun-related deaths per year.   

Nope, not very common at all.  And since gun-related deaths are even lower, I guess that gun-related deaths aren't very common at all either.  That's only partially sarcastic.  Neil deGrasse Tyson recently got pounded for tweeting the statistical observation that people die much more frequently from a litany of other causes for which we do NOT storm the halls of Congress for reform -- like medical malpractice.

Apparently not popular.  But factually accurate.  33,000 GRDs per year in a country of 330 Million is a very low percentage indeed.  Then you subtract those that are justifiable (self-defense, etc.) and the "tragic" GRDs are really low for this population. 

We can keep blaming guns, of course.  But we had guns 100 years ago.  And even at the height of Al Capone's era, we didn't see this kind of gun death rate (based on your graphs, there was only one blip in 1930).  It is because we still valued families.  We still valued God.  We still valued ALL life.  We still had a sense of being "Americans".   We believed in honor.  Media was more about telling the truth than providing a biased agenda.  Movies taught kids to be good and respect their elders. We believed in individual responsibility. 

We've lost all that now.  Restore all those and we'll see a drop in mass shootings as well as all gun-related deaths.

Edited by Mores
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest MormonGator
1 hour ago, Mores said:

We can keep blaming guns, of course.  But we had guns 100 years ago. 

Exactly. I'm not sure if this is true (correct me if I'm wrong) but we probably had more guns and easier access to them as well.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, MormonGator said:

Exactly. I'm not sure if this is true (correct me if I'm wrong) but we probably had more guns and easier access to them as well.  

I doubt we had more, simply because production rates far exceed obsolescence, but any 14 year old kid with the money could mail order a rifle from Sears. 

2 hours ago, Mores said:

Neil deGrasse Tyson recently got pounded for tweeting the statistical observation that people die much more frequently from a litany of other causes for which we do NOT storm the halls of Congress for reform -- like medical malpractice.

And Tyson didn't even mention the 300,000 deaths a year from obesity and sedentary lifestyle related causes. Where are the protests to regulate HFCS and McDonald's salads that have more calories than their burgers?

Edited by NightSG
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Mores
15 hours ago, NightSG said:

Anybody care to comment on why there's not one mention of equine mandible regulation anywhere in Judges?

Is a "ass" considered an "equine"?  I'm not an animal expert, so, I honestly don't know.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Mores said:

Is a "ass" considered an "equine"?  I'm not an animal expert, so, I honestly don't know.

Generally, yes, hence the (limited) ability to interbreed with horses. 

But really; nobody even demanded registration of the deadliest single weapon in the world up to that point?

I mean, three guys with rifles barely managed to match the body count of one Japanese guy with a gas can, and nobody is calling for tighter restrictions on gas cans. 

Edited by NightSG
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Mores
4 minutes ago, NightSG said:

Generally, yes, hence the (limited) ability to interbreed with horses. 

But really; nobody even demanded registration of the deadliest single weapon in the world up to that point?

I mean, three guys with rifles barely managed to match the body count of one Japanese guy with a gas can, and nobody is calling for tighter restrictions on gas cans. 

I'm not familiar with the gas can story.  Would you enlighten me?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, NightSG said:

Wikipedia, but of course the sources are linked:  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Animation_arson_attack

Perhaps we are the better off when nutjobs use firearms as a means of terror.   I know some FBI agents and once expressed my concerns over an attack that could be carried out by a single person and items purchased at just about any ordinary hardware store that has the potential of killing millions of people - not tens, hundreds or even thousands but millions.  Their response was that such scenarios have been discussed and that there is little our government agencies could do to prevent such an attack.

My point is that if we as a nation ever fall outside the merciful protections of G-d (that has vowed that we as a nation must respect him or be wiped out as a person) -- we are in big trouble. 

 

The Traveler

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest MormonGator
On 8/7/2019 at 11:11 AM, NightSG said:

. Where are the protests to regulate HFCS and McDonald's salads that have more calories than their burgers?

We're already there. We sue Philip Morris because cigarettes give us lung cancer. And we sue McDonalds because we can't stop eating Quarter Pounders. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

27 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

We're already there. We sue Philip Morris because cigarettes give us lung cancer. And we sue McDonalds because we can't stop eating Quarter Pounders. 

This is misleading.

Philip Morris got sued not because cigarettes gave Jesse Williams cancer.  They got sued for fraudulent advertising and fraudulent research studies.

The suit against McDonald's causing teens obesity got dismissed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest MormonGator
20 hours ago, Traveler said:

  I know some FBI agents and once expressed my concerns over an attack that could be carried out by a single person and items purchased at just about any ordinary hardware store that has the potential of killing millions of people - not tens, hundreds or even thousands but millions. 

I doubt it would kill "millions". That's a huge number. 

But this shows that guns aren't the problem. Someone who is really determined to kill massive amounts of people will find a way to do it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

I doubt it would kill "millions". That's a huge number. 

But this shows that guns aren't the problem. Someone who is really determined to kill massive amounts of people will find a way to do it. 

Imagine if the Unabomber had been looking for maximum body count instead of targeting a few specific people.  Worse, imagine if he'd been willing to be a martyr as long as he took enough others with him. Given that he actually got his stuff to work reliably, I'm sure it would have been a bloodbath if that's what he'd wanted. 

Boston Marathon could easily have been a dozen bombs instead of just two. Plenty of other times, the bombers' incompetence was all that saved a lot of people; the Columbine shooters, for example, didn't get any of their bombs to work, or the death toll there likely would have been much higher. 

So yes, I'd rather the bad guys focus on their guns to the neglect of more effective mass casualty weapons. Most of them seem to practice with video games that give them unrealistic expectations and low skill there. 

Edited by NightSG
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest MormonGator
12 minutes ago, NightSG said:

Imagine if the Unabomber had been looking for maximum body count instead of targeting a few specific people.  Worse, imagine if he'd been willing to be a martyr as long as he took enough others with him. Given that he actually got his stuff to work reliably, I'm sure it would have been a bloodbath if that's what he'd wanted. 

Boston Marathon could easily have been a dozen bombs instead of just two. Plenty of other times, the bombers' incompetence was all that saved a lot of people; the Columbine shooters, for example, didn't get any of their bombs to work, or the death toll there likely would have been much higher. 

So yes, I'd rather the bad guys focus on their guns to the neglect of more effective mass casualty weapons. Most of them seem to practice with video games that give them unrealistic expectations and low skill there. 

Oh, I understand what you are saying-there could be mass casualties. But let's be realistic here. For the sake of this discussion, let's say the worst terrorist attack in history was 9/11. That used airplanes, incredibly destructive weapons, and it "only" killed 3000 people. 997,000 to go before they reach a million. 

So I'm very skeptical that a terrorist could kill a million people using things they found at Wal Mart. That seems very alarmist and out there.  

Edited by MormonGator
Link to comment
Share on other sites

25 minutes ago, MormonGator said:

I doubt it would kill "millions". That's a huge number. 

But this shows that guns aren't the problem. Someone who is really determined to kill massive amounts of people will find a way to do it. 

I do not what to give any more hints - but the number would be in the millions.  The point I am trying to make is that we are protected by G-d as a nation and if we reject G-d and he withdraws his protection of us - we are at much greater risk than most are willing to realize.  It is impossible for a society to be free and enjoy liberty except they are protected by G-d.  Otherwise, we must sacrifice our freedoms and liberty for safety.  Which, BTW is the essence of those in our government that support the loss of freedom and liberty as necessary for the security and health of everyone in our society.

 

The Traveler

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest MormonGator
5 minutes ago, Traveler said:

I do not what to give any more hints - but the number would be in the millions. 

Wrong. The Battle of the Bulge in World War II didn't kill that many people. 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki COMBINED didn't have that many deaths. 

Edited by MormonGator
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share