Shooter at large on Virgina Tech campus.

[White-Death]

Idiot news network:

UNDENIABLE PROOF VIDEO GAME CAUSE VIOLENCE:
A DVD box with a disk with 'battulfeeuld threee' written on it found in shooter's room! more at 7!

*7 o'clock*
The disk contains 7 Tera-bytes of porn.

Idiot news network urges you to sign a petition to BAN video games!

 

[McMullen]

So clearly Virginia Tech, not videogames, is responsible for violent behavior. That's two incidents at the same school. You can't argue with that.

 

[Frankster]

Maybe they'll consider letting people carry on campus now so they can defend themselves.

Im not sure giving everyone on the campus free reign to have firearms would reduce the chances of this type of incident happening, this would make the process of bringing weapons to class mundane and any prospective loon will find the initial phases of his/her killing spree much easier.

So creating "gun free zones" will make it harder for shooters?
Oh wait. First post already proven that wrong.

And original virginia tech shooting also happened despite a gun free zone, but that doesn't render my point null and void any more then it irrefutably proves everyone should be armed.

If we want to be pedantic about this, neither making gun free zones nor arming everyone is ever gonna be guaranteed proof against this type of incident happening and though I believe there is a correlation between the shootings happening in the virginia tech area and gun ownership (namely, these people wouldn't have had guns in the first place if guns were banned to begin with. And dont gimme crap about illegal criminal gun markets,a a student with social issues is hardly gonna know his way around the criminal underworld will he now? Uk and european students aren't renowned for packing heat as far as i know), ultimately guns have been freely distributed to the american people for so long, a gun ban would be impossible now, people would just stash their guns.

Also, what happened to the violent crime rate in England after they banned guns? Went up.

Statistics are a dangerous thing, too many people use them to support their arguments not really understanding them or confusing causation with correlation which I think is your mistake here (violent crime rate went up after the gun ban therefore gun ban permanently increases the violent crime rate). Checking up various official statistics and also wiki cos i really dont wanna spend 30 mins researching this tells me the picture is far more complicated then what you're saying in that you're ignoring the social factors of the 1998 period and that after the initial spike in gun related crimes aften the handgun ban, crimes with firearms have been steadily decreasing in England for the past years.
Most growing trend of violent crime in england is currently hate crimes, thats been rising since 2001.

According to wiki statistics show that in regards to gun crime in uk, the fatality or serious injurty instance is less then 3%. Now that is a genuinely interesting statistic and one worth looking into if I had the time for it.

One last thing to ponder: you say you carry a gun. Good for you, no wonder why you don't have the fear of guns and dont see the problem in letting others have guns, it would just level the playing field for everyone else, at worst a prospective mugger can be armed like you, at best he won't be armed and you will lol as you take your gun out and mug him instead.

I've never even seen a gun in my entire life. By my standards, if a guy has a gun, then he gets a massive advantage over me and im just fucked. At least I have a chance vs knives or improvised personal weapons.
Main reason I would never want to go to USA is because the idea that just anyone up there could be carrying a loaded firearm whereas i'm solely dependent on my wits and fists would mean i just could never be comfortable as im always at the mercy of others, who they, are comfortable knowing that they are armed. All it would take is some stupid guy who's trigger happy , and there, i'm dead, never even had the chance to defend myself or run away.

Fear im going really off topic, but well, we didnt have a lot of info in the OP so kinda inevitable this would become a gun control topic i guess.

 

[Frizzle]

Snip for length sanity

You're right when you say statistics are dangerous. A lot of times people just look at the rate of gun violence, and not violent crimes as a whole. you can have a high percentage of gun crime, but a low percentage of violent crime overall, and people will still cry foul on guns. That was one of the reasons behind me mentioning Russia in one of my earlier posts. There is a ridiculous amount of violent crime there, but since guns are banned, only about 4,000 out of 100k people have them. Gun crimes are not common at all, but knifing, beatings, and other physical crimes are super prevalent.

My comment about England was probably not the best to make, as I was just trying to kinda make a stab at the other poster because his info was not exactly accurate. So I will concede your points about England (though I do believe socio-economic factors are a big factor).

Don't misunderstand me, I have a very healthy fear and respect for guns. I am comfortable around them though because I spent 8 years in the American military. I am a big stickler for gun safety. It makes me very uncomfortable when people go waving guns around, even when they're not loaded. I think anyone that wants to carry a gun SHOULD have training at least in the basics of safety and marksmanship.

That said, I don't know anyone who hasn't at least seen a gun, so your viewpoint is admittedly new to me. I don't think you should be afraid to come here based on your fear of guns. I mean, that would essentially bar you from more than half of the world. A lot of stuff is put out on the news, yes, but you have to remember that we are a very big and diverse country. There are many different sub-cultures in the U.S. and only a very small number of them get all stupid crazy with their gun violence.

There was a video a number of months ago, showing a guy (totally sober etc) filling up his car at the gas (petrol) station. 2 guys hopped up on drugs, I think meth specifically, decided to attack him while he was in his car so they could try and steal his car from him. They were both beating on him at the same time. You don't really have a chance against that unless you're some MMA fighter. The guy was fortunately carrying, and was able to pull his weapon and shoot one of them twice in the torso. When this happened the other guy backed off and the victim was able to get to safety.
Things like this are one reason why I carry.

 

[CM156_v1legacy]

Did this seriously turn into a gun control debate? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised...

It's The Escapist. The moment I saw this thread I knew that this was going to turn into a debate for gun control. Sigh....