IGX

WTF is wrong with America. That shit just doesn't happen over here.

Before last night America never had a mass shooting at a Batman premiere either.

Fucked up. I got up early, turned on some news, saw that, turned it off and promptly went back to bed. How can people be so shitty?

Fatty, we were hoping you could shed some light. To me, the killer is a moral & psychological Black Box.

Wait. What?

johno wrote:Fatty, we were hoping you could shed some light. To me, the killer is a moral & psychological Black Box.

I thought it was amazing that the killer's mother immediately responded that the police had the right guy, as though she wasn't even surprised. How fucked up does someone have to be for his own mother to express no disbelief when told he committed this sort of atrocity?

Last month in Seattle, the father of the Cafe Racer murderer said the same thing. He said he saw it coming.

Having said that, the amount of husbands/ex lovers who killed their families then themselves is happening a lot in Italy just lately. Something's not right for sure.

It's fucking scary*.

The one thing that I noticed was how everybody interviewed said, "it was just like a movie" or "it was like a video game" when the shots started and people were screaming, etc.

I don't want to go down the whole "video games and violent movies are desensitizing us to real life acts of violence" route...but fairly accurate depictions of violence are fucking around us all the time.

One has to wonder if it does play a part, and if so, how large.

*Ninja edit to add: it's a fucking reminder of how fragile life is...30-some-odd people didn't go to the Batman movie last night thinking they were going to get smoke-bombed and then killed.

Right down the road from us. Sucks

I'm sorry but I find all of this so depressing and cheap. As context emerges I might have something useful to say but not really now. This much is true, if we as a society, as I do personally, wish to be able to own firearms we need to rethink how we tackle the lone wolf killer issue, given the amount of firepower that they can bring to bear.

Too bad that old fart from the internet cafe wasn't a Batman fan.

vern wrote:Too bad that old fart from the internet cafe wasn't a Batman fan.

...because a dark theater, filled with smoke and a man in body armor with a rifle and two pistols is the perfect situation for more armed citizens to start firing.

Fat Cat wrote:I'm sorry but I find all of this so depressing and cheap. As context emerges I might have something useful to say but not really now. This much is true, if we as a society, as I do personally, wish to be able to own firearms we need to rethink how we tackle the lone wolf killer issue, given the amount of firepower that they can bring to bear.

This. This times a billion.

Fat Cat wrote:I'm sorry but I find all of this so depressing and cheap. As context emerges I might have something useful to say but not really now. This much is true, if we as a society, as I do personally, wish to be able to own firearms we need to rethink how we tackle the lone wolf killer issue, given the amount of firepower that they can bring to bear.

Fuck Y'all! Y'all ain't a' takin mah guns! That thar Obama done set this up.

cleaner464 wrote:

Fat Cat wrote:I'm sorry but I find all of this so depressing and cheap. As context emerges I might have something useful to say but not really now. This much is true, if we as a society, as I do personally, wish to be able to own firearms we need to rethink how we tackle the lone wolf killer issue, given the amount of firepower that they can bring to bear.

Fuck Y'all! Y'all ain't a' takin mah guns! That thar Obama done set this up.

Are you actually this fucked up and stupid?

Fat Cat wrote:I'm sorry but I find all of this so depressing and cheap. As context emerges I might have something useful to say but not really now. This much is true, if we as a society, as I do personally, wish to be able to own firearms we need to rethink how we tackle the lone wolf killer issue, given the amount of firepower that they can bring to bear.

Gun control is impossible. There is no possible way to take away all the guns in civilian hands in the US, or even account for them.

Tackling 'lone wolf killer' situations is equally impossible - it's a freak occurrence that can't be predicted.

So, it's really only an option of accepting that shit like this is going to happen on occasion and it's still safer to go to a movie theater/etc. than drive a car or live on shitty American fast food.

baffled wrote:

cleaner464 wrote:

Fat Cat wrote:I'm sorry but I find all of this so depressing and cheap. As context emerges I might have something useful to say but not really now. This much is true, if we as a society, as I do personally, wish to be able to own firearms we need to rethink how we tackle the lone wolf killer issue, given the amount of firepower that they can bring to bear.

Fuck Y'all! Y'all ain't a' takin mah guns! That thar Obama done set this up.

Are you actually this fucked up and stupid?

?? Are you upset boy? Here, let me make you feel better -

So, it's really only an option of accepting that shit like this is going to happen on occasion and it's still safer to go to a movie theater/etc. than drive a car or live on shitty American fast food.

Complete control, no, of course that would be impossible, but we could consider restrictions on the current "blanket" second amendment.

The first amendment is vital to freedom and a thriving democracy (lulz), but we still restrict certain aspects of it; screaming "FIRE" in a theater, libel or threats, etc.

There's no reason we couldn't enforce more in depth mental and background checks, limiting amount of type of weapon, strict training and constant re-certification requirements, etc.

Police state is a far extreme, wild west is the other. The answer, like most things, lies somewhere in the middle. But in the US the only way the discussion moves is towards the wild west direction.

milosz wrote:

Fat Cat wrote:I'm sorry but I find all of this so depressing and cheap. As context emerges I might have something useful to say but not really now. This much is true, if we as a society, as I do personally, wish to be able to own firearms we need to rethink how we tackle the lone wolf killer issue, given the amount of firepower that they can bring to bear.

Gun control is impossible. There is no possible way to take away all the guns in civilian hands in the US, or even account for them.

Tackling 'lone wolf killer' situations is equally impossible - it's a freak occurrence that can't be predicted.

So, it's really only an option of accepting that shit like this is going to happen on occasion and it's still safer to go to a movie theater/etc. than drive a car or live on shitty American fast food.

Slow down. I never suggested that there should be additional gun control. I never suggested that guns be taken away, but neither do I accept that "nothing can be done". I don't support either of those ideas. That is looking at only the extremes and is rarely a good idea.

There's no reason we couldn't enforce more in depth mental and background checks, limiting amount of type of weapon, strict training and constant re-certification requirements, etc.

There are more guns than people in the US. Most of them are, at this point, untraceable. I've purchased half of mine from individuals and there exists no record whatsoever that I own them.

"In-depth mental and background checks" - impossible in the first and irrelevant in the second. Where are we going to do this mental screening? What records will be kept by the state? Will they be available to employers, the police, the government?
What background check would have spotlighted a mild-mannered med student as a mass killer?

Training and certification - well, training doesn't seem to be an issue here, does it? I don't think those were accidental shots.

I am left-wing in ways that would make the FSF vomit as a whole - but at heart I'm a realist. Gun control - particularly of the sort that involves taking away guns - is not in the cards. Instead we get nonsense like the Assault Weapons Ban that do nothing to benefit the public at large but make scared people feel better.

What can be done that's meaningful in stopping the handful of mass killings that occur without being horribly invasive to vast, law-abiding portions of the citizenry?

If this asshole wanted to kill people bad enough and didn't have access to guns, he would have found other ways to do it.

Perhaps, but he wouldn't necessarily have been able to come up with a way that would allow him to hurt so many people so severely.

What we need is a ban on comic books.