Almalieque wrote:
First, as I stated, there are no laws in any scenario that will prevent any thing from ever happening. If your goal is to prevent all shootings, then you would have to argue against the 2nd amendment, in which supporting it would make you a hypocrite.
Smash sucks his thumb, which is why I said "effective at preventing these kinds of shootings". I'm the one who originally said you can't prevent them entirely. The problem is there are two approaches: Try to make it harder for people to be able to obtain weapons and physically use them in these kinds of shootings *or* accept that prevention is nearly impossible and instead focus on reducing the likely body count when such a shooting occurs, which may by itself deter some shooters from bothering in the first place.
The gun control approach only works by preventing the person from having the weapons to use in the shooting in the first place. It therefore places very high restrictions on gun ownership, with very little results for the exact reason you keep mentioning, but seem unable to grasp the meaning. Since all people are "law abiding" until they commit a crime, in many cases, you can't prevent a person from doing something like this without restricting gun access to all "law abiding" citizens as well. You can't know if that person might commit a shooting, so your solution requires limiting his access to guns and the type of guns on the off chance that he commits a crime with them.
That's the wrong approach IMO.
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1. You have a child with no criminal record and has not been declared incompetent.
18 year olds are not children. I'd talk about the psychology of your choice of labels, but this post will likely be long enough, so I'll spare the peanut gallery (this time
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That would make him a "Law abiding citizen". So according to you and other proponents, laws aren't for him as he would "never" do anything wrong. So, do you agree that "law abiding citizens" is an irrelevant term only used to distract the public from the point as the result is the same? Or is this 18 year old a criminal, differentiating him from the people who follow laws?
Neither. I'd say that attempting to punish everyone because they *might* commit a crime is not only moronic, but is in abject violation of the most basic principles of a free society.
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2. He wouldn't be walking into a school or mall, due to the metal detectors.
What metal detectors? So you're advocating a police state then. This is exactly the problem with the gun control approach. While gun control is just one aspect of it, the basic concept behind it is troubling precisely because it presumes that we should restrict the actions of everyone on the grounds that they might commit a crime. Again, this is a violation of the principles of a free society. But this route is what you *must* follow in order for your approach to have any chance of success.
Long before you'll put a dent in the random/mass shootings, you'll have taken a huge chunk of our liberties away. That's why I reject this as a good methodology.
Oh. And aside from that, let me also point out that metal detectors don't actually prevent you from entering. They just warn people that you're there. All this means is that the shooter starts his shooting at the metal detector, and not a little bit past it. Unless you're proposing massive security gates, armed guards, gun turrets, and whatever other ridiculous thing you think will make every disarmed person on the other side "safe" that is.
Wouldn't it be easier to just allow the other folks to be armed? I'm honestly far far less worried by the thought that random people around me might be carrying guns than having to go through security checkpoints everywhere I go out of some fear that the one in a million odds of a shooting happening might just happen where/when I am. See, cause in the event that happens, the static security is less likely to be effective than random people in the crowd being armed. And lets not forget that if you make some areas super impregnable, the shooter will just go elsewhere. So while I'm safe in the armed fortress you've made my mall into, I'm less safe in the parking lot walking in. Or say, in the huge line waiting to get into the secure area.
You're failing to understand that there's no way to prevent someone who wants to kill a bunch of random people in a public space, unless you can put that level of security in *every* public space. That means every single part of the world I might travel in between my house and everywhere else. You just can't do that. It's not possible, even if we had the money and time to do so. Which puts us back at gun control, which is limited by the 2nd amendment. Thus, unless you're proposing to repeal the 2nd amendment, the approach you're using can't work. Ever.
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3. As for some "random street corner", is this street corner in a low or high crime area? What time is it? Is this a highly populated area, like down town?
Who cares? Any random public place where there isn't a security checkpoint and armed guards. So unless you propose to put them *everywhere* there will be places with crowds of people to shoot at that are not protected by your approach.
Let people carry their own weapons, and you don't have to spend a dime on that kind of security. Everyone is safe, everywhere, all the time. Better yet, since the would be shooter doesn't know who is carrying a weapon, he has no way to find where the unarmed targets are. It costs nothing. It puts no undo strain our our liberties. And it would actually be
vastly more effective at preventing these kinds of shootings.
One wonders if people arrive at your approach because it's the best way to solve the problem at hand, or because they start by wanting to restrict gun ownership and then latch on to this as a justification. Because it honestly makes no sense at all. It's counterproductive towards the presumed goal. We need less stringent gun control, not more. Let more people own guns. Let more people carry guns. Let more people carry them concealed. Do that, and you'll see the rate of shootings like this decrease dramatically. And as a bonus, you'll likely see all sort of other crimes decrease as well. People are far less willing to try to mug someone if there's a possibility that person might be armed.
But let's not let logic and reason overwhelm our irrational fears over guns.
Edited, Mar 13th 2013 7:15pm by gbaji