Texas School shooting 19 children and 2 adults murdered

Yurt2 · 25-05-2022 10:56am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119110023#Comment_119110023

Gun control is a deeply political issue in the US. In fact, it's the biggest glowing red example of America's political ills.

If something like the events of yesterday isn't the time to throw a bucket of ice water over the collective heads of 2nd amendment maximalists to wake up, then when?

It's the same old story. "Don't use the slaughter of dozens of innocents at the barrell of a gun as an excuse to talk about muh guns"

So, so tiresome; so evasive; and ultimately, extremely manipulative.

Tonesjones · 25-05-2022 10:57am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119110912#Comment_119110912

I will circle back to you on that. Il have to check.

I have my doubts though.

BattleCorp · 25-05-2022 10:58am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111042#Comment_119111042

Reports are that he stole his mother's guns. Is this untrue?

paul71 · 25-05-2022 10:59am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111043#Comment_119111043

I come from a rural family, the gun I saw is owned by my father. I live in a rural area. If my father passes before I do I will have the gun crushed.

And yes if you own a gun in Ireland for anything other than shooting foxes if you have a chicken coup you are not normal.

Yurt2 · 25-05-2022 11:00am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119110579#Comment_119110579

I'll give you the Executive Summary:

He was mentally ill, probably a sociopath and had access to weapons.

Let's run an experiment: we'll give the denizens of the Central Mental Hospital access to high powered rifles and let them out on day release.

Wibbs · 25-05-2022 11:00am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119110667#Comment_119110667

It's an interesting, if increasingly tragic debate. I 100% agree with your re the libertarian stuff. It's the politic of sociopathy. Though I would suggest that every man for himself was at the core of The Amercan Dream long before it got a politic behind it, or at least the strong individualism that was at the core of America. It's one reason why mass movements of the collective and state like communism and facism never took off there.

But something else seems to have changed at the core of US society in the last thirty odd years, guns or no. Post WW2 and before up until the 80's gun laws were far more lax overall in the US. OK you had outlaws like Bonnie and Clyde and they were armed to the teeth, but they killed about a dozen people, mostly lawmen and over a few years in the course of robberies and pursuit. They made national and international news. The Valentine's day massacre by mafia types "shocked the world" and that was seven or eight dead and they were other hoodlums. Now there were other mass shootings of course but the majority were acts of criminals and usually involved a few people doing the shooting. The single shooter going insane and on a rampage in schools and the like was far more the outlier. Again when gun laws were a lot more lax and you could buy a Thompson machine gun from a catalogue. The guns were present, but the particular type of lone insane gunman was a lot less so.

That seems to start off in the late 80's ramps up in the 90's and goes tragically and rapidly ever northward since 2000. I'd takee you point re reduced social support particularly for young men and mental illness clearly has a large part to play, but social supports were as bad or less in the past and mental illness had even fewer avenues for treatments and treatments themselves and was far more of a stigma to be locked away. The internet and social media amping up these insane morons certainly has some part to play, never mind the attention they crave is weaponised by social media companies and the "copycat" factor, but that wasn't in play in the 80's and 90's. Something is very wrong at the core of American society. The guns are tragic tool of the symptoms of that. I don't know how it's fixable tbh.

BattleCorp · 25-05-2022 11:01am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111064#Comment_119111064

So, all target shooters and hunters and non-chicken owning farmers aren't normal. Riiiiiigggggggt.

paul71 · 25-05-2022 11:05am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111081#Comment_119111081

Yes, now you are getting it.

There is no reason for target shooting, there is no reason for hunting. They are the height of stupidity. If you want to target shoot, grow up buy a basketball and a basketball hoop or a hurl and Sliotar, and if you feel insulted by that I frankly do not care.

Yurt2 · 25-05-2022 11:05am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111012#Comment_119111012

And what was Adam Lanza's mother doing with guns? Was she a sport shooter? An outdoorswoman that went hunting on the regular?

She was a suburban mother with more kit in her home than the average Irish defence forces member is issued with. With a deeply disturbed son in the homeplace.

That's f*cking crazy sh*t. Having guns as a household item as if it it's a Dyson hoover is crazy.

monkeybutter · 25-05-2022 11:08am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111043#Comment_119111043

i have seen zero guns in the last decade in ireland, probably seen two in my life,

perfectly normal, not sure how being sheltered would affect that? is it like a street thing?

both belonged to farmers, who just left them in easy reach of young hands

very few own guns, those that do tend to own multiple, so the number of households that have them are tiny and I'm sure don't tend to leave them hanging around for me to see

They also tend to make up the vast majority of those killed by guns in ireland too

weird that, is it the farmer aspect? the kind of person into shooting?

breezy1985 · 25-05-2022 11:11am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111043#Comment_119111043

I have only ever seen one privately owned gut in my entire life in Ireland. I suppose I'm just very sheltered and don't mix with enough posh people or farmers.

The gun in question was a rudimentary shotgun and certainly nothing you could go on a rampage with.

BattleCorp · 25-05-2022 11:12am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111092#Comment_119111092

I'm not calling you an idiot but I feel your view on the matter is idiotic. And you probably feel my views on allowing guns for target shooting is idiotic. And that's fine. We are all entitled to our opinions.

You do realise that most first world countries allow guns for target shooting and hunting? Are those countries wrong? Apparently according to your mindset they are.

You don't feel like there's a reason for target shooting or hunting but plenty of other people think there is, given that there are nearly 200k licenced firearms here in Ireland.

BattleCorp · 25-05-2022 11:15am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111094#Comment_119111094

I didn't know Adam Lanza's mother so I can't answer what she was doing with guns. It's America though. She didn't need a reason to have the guns.

monkeybutter · 25-05-2022 11:18am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111137#Comment_119111137

and this is the problem

here you do

she fell into the trap that you need a gun for protection and guess who got shot, she did

you own a gun, you increase your chances massively of being shot, mostly with your own gun, mostly by yourself

paul71 · 25-05-2022 11:21am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111117#Comment_119111117

I don't care how many licenced guns there are in Ireland. I don't care about the feelings of the people who own them. I honestly think anyone pointing a gun at a piece of paper and getting satisfaction from a bang is childish.

I think all guns outside Police, Army and Animal control officials should be banned, and I am not sheltered. I grew up on farms and in all honesty guns created more problem in rural areas than they solved. Fools from local gun clubs pointlessly shooting pheasants in fields next to horses and cattle have always been a bigger problem than our largest carnivore the humble fox.

Yurt2 · 25-05-2022 11:23am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111137#Comment_119111137

"She didn't need a reason" is a rather circular way of putting it.

Everything points to the fact that Americans are more likely to be killed by the guns in their home, either by themselves or by a family member / intimate partner rather than a notional boogyman that is coming to invade their castle.

Then add in if someone with access to the weapons has a mental health episode or just plain has a personality disorder, and you get these headline rampages.

Pointing to the US Constitution and shrugging shoulders is the dumbest sh*t possible at times like these.

monkeybutter · 25-05-2022 11:25am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111172#Comment_119111172

if those lads hadnt been out hunting, where would larry muprhy be?

paul71 · 25-05-2022 11:28am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111199#Comment_119111199

Thats pointless rubbish. He could have as easily been caught by a lost tree hugging hippy.

Guns are a childish obsession of inadequate fools.

seamus · 25-05-2022 11:29am

The "illegal guns" thing is a distraction.

Illegal guns don't just appear out of thin air. All illegal guns were once legal guns. The more legal guns people purchase, the more illegal guns there will eventually be.

The first step towards capping illegal guns is to limit the sale of legal ones and put very strict conditions on how they're kept and registered. This put a huge bottleneck of the availability of illegal weapons and means you're no longer pissing in the wind when you confiscate them.

thefallingman · 25-05-2022 11:30am

hand gun, shotgun or a rifle for hunting i have no problem with if there is control like there is here, but why they need machine guns and pump action shotguns ect is beyond me, but it'll never change they don't care about their kids as long as it's not their own, simple as

BattleCorp · 25-05-2022 11:30am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111150#Comment_119111150

I get your point about guns increasing the likelihood that you could be shot. Similarly, owning a car increases your likelihood of being injured in a car crash. But I still don't think that's a reason for people calling for guns to be banned. The vast majority of guns are used safely week in/week out. Even though we have nearly 200k licenced guns in Ireland, we have very little issue with them. Most of our issues here come from illegal firearms that are being imported.......e.g. the AK47s used in the Regency Hotel shooting.

Speaking as a gun owner, l'm not in favour of a free-for-all system. Like driving licences, I don't believe everyone should have one. Some people aren't competent or safe enough with a car and similarly, some people aren't competent or safe enough with a gun.

Personally I'd be happy with background checks and some other checks and balances to try ensure the guns are in the hands of sane, competent individuals.

Yurt2 · 25-05-2022 11:30am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111117#Comment_119111117

You may be fine with with yourself owning whatever weapons you want, but I'm not particularly ok with a local Garda signing off on gun licences for people with limited insight into their mental well-being.

Eventually, we'll get a public mass shooter event in Ireland. Probably not to the same extent as the US as we (thankfully) don't licence ridiculous weapons like the US - but the questions will come thick and fast why the local Garda signed off on a licence for a known kook with anger issues.

You may well be a maximalisit for gun rights within the bandwidth of Irish law, but I'm pretty much a maximalisit in the other direction. If a farmer is to own a gun, there should be a damn good agricultural reason why he needs one, and a psychological assessment should be done on him/her as a condition of the license.

Ditto for sport shooters - any evidence of substance misuse or mental health issues and there should be no licence.

monkeybutter · 25-05-2022 11:32am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111215#Comment_119111215

that is rubbish, this country shows people can have firearms, in a controlled way without it being a problem

it is not more childish than running around after a ball

c.p.w.g.w · 25-05-2022 11:32am

I don't even think the 2nd amendment in itself is the problem...

It's the actual laws around gun ownership, maybe even things like prescription drug/illecit drug policies and extreme poverty(as in folks having to work 2 jobs just feed themselves) are probably issues which feed into America's issue's of gun violence...I heard once that the majority of people who partook in these type shootings were mentally ill, but sure they were poor(most likely/uninsured) so didn't get the help they needed

In Oz they have big gun ownership, same with Switzerland, so it's not just the guns...

bunderoon · 25-05-2022 11:35am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119110623#Comment_119110623

If you don't identify and solve the root cause, you'll never solve the overall problem. Banning guns obviously helps, but just think of all the crimes that happen with unregistered / stolen firearms. Like prohibition, the problem wasn't resolved.

Mental Health is the common theme in this. The answers lie with the why.

Don't fix that, then these terrible tragedies will keep happening with either legal or illegal firearms.

25-05-2022 11:35am

People naturally veer away from an argument that suggests that having access to guns means you're more likely to shoot up your local school, or shoot your wife, or shoot yourself. It means if we had the same amount of gun ownership in Ireland, we would be running around killing each other like Americans do.

I personally don't think that would be the case, so that leads to there being other factors in America, beyond just guns.

paul71 · 25-05-2022 11:38am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111226#Comment_119111226

We have not had a mass shooting but we have dozens family of murder/suicides, and guess what they have pretty much all been in the farming or rural community.

I would not be arsed with the mental health checks at all, just ban guns entirely. If that upsets 200,000 licenced gun holders I really don't care.

breezy1985 · 25-05-2022 11:38am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111236#Comment_119111236

I don't ever remember poverty being an issue or key demographic with mass shootings.

monkeybutter · 25-05-2022 11:39am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111236#Comment_119111236

OZ just shows it was the guns, they moved from an americans style to a more irish style of gun ownership because they said enough was enough after what would amount to 2 weeks worth of mass shooting in the states or a few decades

and the ban on the likes of auto and semi auto guns and a massive gun buyback and surrender program

seamus · 25-05-2022 11:40am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119111150#Comment_119111150

For reference - if you have a gun in your house, the male members of your household are 8 times more likely to die by suicide. The female members are 35 times more likely to die by suicide.

This isn't because guns make people suicidal, it's because if you have a gun in your house then anyone in your family who is suicidal is much more likely to be successful.

Texas School shooting 19 children and 2 adults murdered

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