http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18922685

Struggling to understand why you would just post a link to another website without any comment? What’s the purpose of your post?

RIP to the poor buggers involved, another tragic loss of life

Ah pants…. just realised I posted without typing anything… too late to edit now.

Just saying how shocking it is – how could anyone do such a thing?

Americans + over the counter assault rifles = carnage.

Fairly regular occurrence sadly.

Lets wait and see if the weapons were legally held… ‘suspect they were.

Absolutley tragic.

They really need to revisit the “right to bear arms” when it means the unhinged can access such devastating firepower with such ease.

Many of the victims are kids too.

I just can’t see how anyone in their right mind could think that a situation where any old Tom, Dick or Harry can wander in off the street and buy themselves an arsenal, is ever going to end any differently to this?

I mean… the whole world is full of absolute nut-jobs. Just look around you on any street. It just seems best not to allow them limitless access to automatic weapons

Will this change anything? No. Unfortunately it won’t make a scrap of difference against the lobbying power of the NRA. Depressing

200 000 000 (legal) privately owned guns in america
that sounds like the antithesis of civilisation to me

1.5 million sold last xmas!
with the kind of money that generates i cant see anything changing

certainly obama/romney wouldnt dare do anything about it in an election year

kimbers – we were looking at some online ads for firearms. I was gobsmacked by how cheap they are. You could pick up an assault rifle for about $150 😯

you want the right to bear arms? Sure….. but this is what it’s gonna cost you.

I guess it just depends what value you place on things – pretty f*cked-up if you ask me

This is nothing to do with the right to bear firearms, just about some **** that has decided killing innocent people is his (or her) right.
Does the Joseph Fritzl case mean that you have no right to own a basement, no, it just means that we live in a world that some idiots believe in their tiny little mind that they can harm you through whatever means.

This is nothing to do with the right to bear firearms, just about some **** that has decided killing innocent people is his (or her) right.
Does the Joseph Fritzl case mean that you have no right to own a basement, no, it just means that we live in a world that some idiots believe in their tiny little mind that they can harm you through whatever means.

😯 really?

Point is: there are nutters everywhere, always have been, always will be. Perhaps making it so easy for them to get hold of machine guns is not terribly sensible.

Aye oop. Charlton Heston’s turned up. No… you’re right. Its nowt at all to do with being able to stroll into a shop and buy a shit-load of guns and ammo. How could it be? Repeat after me….

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vX4ETlCr4A[/video]

Probabley best to wait for the facts to emerge before making any judgement regarding access to legal weapons.

Why? With 12 confirmed dead, dozens injured and a bloke arrested with a selection of firearms, which can be bought legally like you’re getting a pizza, its hardly leaping off on flights of fancy to piece together a rough approximation of what might of happened, is it?

It’s odd how it always seems to be the USA have they not evolved yet ? Mass random killing, does anyone know of anywhere else were this happens.

cheekyboy – Member

It’s odd how it always seems to be the USA have they not evolved yet ? Mass random killing, does anyone know of anywhere else were this happens.

Hungerford?
Dunblane?
Cumbria?

Other spree killings recently in Germany, Canada, Finland, Australia, Norway, the Philippines etc etc etc

bravohotel8er is correct guns are a global problem, they should be ilegal in every country

doesn’t really matter if the guns were legal or not….. At the point where there are that many firearms in circulation, “gun control” is surely just lip service.

Struggling to understand why you would just post a link to another website without any comment? What’s the purpose of your post?

To be fair I don’t see what the problem is.

Why? With 12 confirmed dead, dozens injured and a bloke arrested with a selection of firearms, which can be bought legally like you’re getting a pizza, its hardly leaping off on flights of fancy to piece together a rough approximation of what might of happened, is it?

It’s not hard to get a shotgun licence in the UK, you know. I’ve got 3 in my cellar (2 of which are semi-auto, and can fire their 3-shot capacity in under 0.5s), any of which could cause absolute carnage. I could get a Firearms Certificate shotgun very easily (up to 8-shot capacity) which would, in the wrong hands, be capable of hideous destruction.

There are hundreds of thousands of shotguns in the UK, and yet the death rate from all guns (including illegally held ones) is around 0.46/100,000 people, equating to around 250 deaths per year. Of that, approximately 45 deaths per year are homicides.

The USA, on the other hand, has a death rate of 10.27/100,000 which equates to approximately 31,000 gun-related deaths per annum, of which 12,500 or so are homicides (the remainder are preponderantly suicides, sadly).

It’s all to do with the attitude of the population. Most people in the UK could get a shotgun if they wanted to, but they can’t be bothered. That shows with the statistic that for every 100 headcount there are just 6.2 guns in England/Wales, whereas in the USA there are 88.8. Yep, the US has 14 times the number of guns as the UK per head of population. Simply put, we really don’t want guns, at least not as a general rule, and those of us who have them tend to be very careful with them

Looking at those figures.

UK death rate 0.46/100,000
US death rate 10.27/100,000

US TO UK ownership ratio 14, so extrapolating UK death rate on US ownership
0.46 * 14 = 6.44/100,000

Which although being 62% of the US rate, does seem a fair bit closer.

‘course my maths could be garbage 🙂

bravohotel8er is correct guns are a global problem, they should be ilegal in every country

I think you’ll find that in many countries they are; our firearm laws are among the strictest in the world. However, an illegal weapon, which every handgun in the UK is, (apart from air weapons), is an illegal weapon, so breaking the law is hardly going to be a deterrent to someone intent on committing an illegal act.
Dunblaine and Hungerford happened with legally held weapons belonging to members of gun clubs, although to be fair, in at least one case the perp was allowed to have a licence by a chief constable against the advice of other police who knew the bloke, and he had illegal weapons as well, so he at least could have been stopped if advice had been followed.
This madman had at least four weapons on him, and, after reading a Fb post by someone asking how he could have killed so many, I did a search, and if he was using an AR-15, a common semi-auto in the States, he could have a 60 or 100 round mag on it!
It’s a miracle that the death toll wasn’t higher, really. A terrible thing for his family, and those of his victims.

Grim news indeed. It staggers me that a Colorado citizen can legally own an Assault rifle with up to 20 rounds and not have to register it. I can understand handguns for personal protection and shotguns for vermin control, say, but an Assault rifle whether semi- or full-auto is quite unjustifiable in normal society…

it’s trending on twitter (jesus, did I just say that) A woman who was killed blogged in June about how when she lived in Canada she was caught in the middle of a shooting in a food court but changing her mind what food she wanted saved her life.

Her last tweet was to a friend saying “film starts in 20”

I know its all social media and that and blah blah blah, but that put a human face on something that is so easy to forget that innocent people were killed when it’s overshadowed by an argument about gun ownership.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say, things like this just shouldn’t happen

was an incident last month in our village were an enstranged boyfriend killed his gf sister and seriously wounded his gf.
his mum told police firearm department not to allow him one, 1 month later this happened.
i think there sdhould be a mental health check and yearly updates to police. i am an arms owner.
this is in n.ireland were our laws are very strict so this stuff happens anywere.

I live in western Kansas (adjacent to Colorado) and the news is jammed full with the story… Tragic! The suspect is is currently in his apartment wired with “incendiary devices” whilst police surround him. Apparently the guy claimed to be “the joker”. The news said he was in swat gear and had his hair and beard dyed red “like the joker” (wtf?)
I think the disorientation of the movie theatre exacerbated the carnage. Witnesses claimed they thought it was a publicity stunt until it was all over and they saw the blood.
Theatres here have armed security at night, and many people (including my wife) can legally carry concealed weapons for self-defence. I am quite surprised nobody responded to the threat there and then. Very early to speculate…

My sympathy goes out to all those involved.

Edit: My mistake – The assailant was detained outside the theatre and is not inside the booby-trapped apartment

Might be slightly out outta date, but it’s worth a watch, Bowling for Columbine (2002). It’s a film based on this topic.

its just mind bogglingly horrible. bbc news is saying a 4month baby was killed too.

Perhaps not Elephant…

USA logic

I thought it was a direct assault and proper protest on the despicable franchise purporting to be a Film, it’s about a bloke who dresses like a bat to fight crime FFS! seriously tho.. Ordinary people shouldn’t have firearms. A right to Bear Arms should go no higher than a pitchfork.

?”There’s no connection between having a gun and shooting someone with it, and not having a gun and not shooting someone.” Bill Hicks

The problem is, the gun lobby will use this argument: If people in the cinema were armed, they would have been able to return fire and prevent the deaths.

It’s the argument pro-gun people come out with after every mass shooting.

tradgic, I’m sure if every nutter/mentally ill person in the UK could easily get a gun there would be similar carnage!

but the Americans feel very strongly about there right to bear arms.

Mass shooting incidents in the US since 2005

62 pages long

but the Americans feel very strongly about there right to bear arms.

I really admire the reason that the ‘right to bear arms’ was originally created, i.e. to enable the population of the country to have the ability to defend themselves against a subjugation by a tyrannical leadership. So I can understand why they would want to defend the concept.
Alas it’s all gone a bit astray over the years.

really?

Point is: there are nutters everywhere, always have been, always will be. Perhaps making it so easy for them to get hold of machine guns is not terribly sensible.

Except there are so many legal and illegal firearms in the States that banning law abiding citizens from owning them will increase the rate of violent crime as criminals find it so easy to access illegal weaponry.

Those states that have relaxed their firearms laws further and allow concealed carry have seen violent crime rates massively decrease.

Like it or not the cats out the bag, guns are now a part of their culture.

Not only that, Canucks and the Swiss own as many guns yet don’t murder each other at anywhere near the same rate. Just banning guns is the usual, non reasoned, lazy answer to America’s problem. Changing the attitudes and culture that leads to shootings is the better way.

I totally agree bwaap…. I didn’t say that guns should be banned, I said:

Perhaps making it so easy for them to get hold of machine guns is not terribly sensible

gun culture is so engrained in the US, it’s not as easy as just banning them. Anyway, it’s a moot point – the gun lobbyists are so rich/powerful, a ban will never happen.