https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-46135459

Again

and

again

and

again

Why are we so bothered about it?

A load of people I’ve never met have been murdered by someone else I never met.  Happens every day in crapholes all over the world but because it’s the usa people actually “care” about it.

Shrugs shoulders, moves on.

Not sure they can revoke an amendment but I’m sure they could change the specification of the arms they are allowed to bear and enhance the pre-checks made before ownership is permitted.

Without really upsetting the population, it would be impossible to mop up the lake of weapons that have been manufactured and sold in the last two hundred years.

But let’s be honest. The gun is just a vehicle for delivering somebody’s hatred and psychosis.

Why are we so bothered about it?

My thoughts exactly.  The majority of US people love guns and wan t people to be able to have access to them.  They are well aware of this downside but they think it is worth it.   Let them get on with it.

A warm shower of reason from Sam Harris

https://samharris.org/the-riddle-of-the-gun/

But let’s be honest. The gun is just a vehicle for delivering somebody’s hatred and psychosis.

Yes but bullets do a lot more damage than thoughts. I’m trying to recall the last time multiple people died of a serious verbal assault

Why are we so bothered about it?

Partly because we actually share a lot of history with the US, partly because the US seems to insist on telling everyone how amazing it is and how it’s the best place to be in the world.

The majority of US people love guns

The majority of “US people” don’t own one.

The majority of US people love guns and wan t people to be able to have access to them.

Incorrect

The majority want stricter controls

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/02/28/gun-control-polling-parkland-430099

http://time.com/5167216/americans-gun-control-support-poll-2018/

Not sure they can revoke an amendment

What does the word ‘amendment’ mean?

When I lived there, my Father had a gun.

I found it.

I played Cowboys and Indians with it..

Aged 7

They don’t need to revoke it, just implement it as the founding fathers actually intended….

Not sure they can revoke an amendment

thats why they still have prohibition of alcohol in the US 🙂

You can revoke and Amendment with and Amendment. The 21st Amendment revokes the 18th Amendment.

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Not sure they can revoke an amendment……

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They repealed the 18th amendment.

But let’s be honest. The gun is just a vehicle for delivering somebody’s hatred and psychosis.

Yes but bullets do a lot more damage than thoughts. I’m trying to recall the last time multiple people died of a serious verbal assault

So do knives as evidenced by the rising number of tragic deaths and serious injuries in this country.

Well the current president thinks he can revoke the citizenship by birth one without any hassle so he could sort this out tomorrow.

I mean it’s not as if a lot of people make a lot of money from death in the US….

So do knives as evidenced by the rising number of tragic deaths and serious injuries in this country.

The majority of knife crime seems to be gang related, tragic yes but not the same as most mass shootings in the US. Sure there’s been multiple random stabbing events but I’m pretty sure they’d have been even worse if guns had been more readily available here.

I can’t see the 2nd amendment ever changing, US politics is just too f**ked up for it to get changed (even though the majority seem to support change). Looks like it’s largely being left to individual states to introduce stricter controls but I can’t see it having much effect any time soon.

That Sam Harris article is such a load of bollocks, are there women in the street getting raped at knifepoint in front of a dozen witnesses in the UK? No.

Gun control is about public health. Not about individual right to self defence. I don’t care if it allows Sam Harris to defend his family more easily if that right kills a wider section of society.

The hesitation of bystanders in these situations makes perfect sense—and “diffusion of responsibility” has little to do with it. The fantasies of many martial artists aside, to go unarmed against a person with a knife is to put oneself in very real peril, regardless of one’s training. The same can be said of attacks involving multiple assailants. A world without guns is a world in which no man, not even a member of Seal Team Six, can reasonably expect to prevail over more than one determined attacker at a time

My brother once overpowered 5 rugby players, causing two of them to need facial reconstructive surgery. I assume then that he his harder than a Seal Team 6 member.

Raybanwomble beat me to it. That Sam Harris piece far from being a “a warm shower of reason” is a cold shower of piss.

Some of my family own guns (concealed licence and carry), vote republican, and live in Texas. They’re lovely people. They’re also **** misinformed.

The reality is that even in the US you are more likely to be harmed by someone you know, someone in your family. Family owned weapons in the states are more likely to be used offensively then defensively.

Why are we so bothered about it?

A load of people I’ve never met have been murdered by someone else I never met.

Why am I bothered about it?  Because I have a heart, and I care that innocent people are being killed there and all over the world even if I haven’t met them.

But in the case of the US, my wife is American, as is (over) half my extended family, and they are all kind, compassionate and intelligent people.  Your suggestion that all Americans are gun toting idiots is extremely ignorant, and your follow-up that even gun toting fools deserve to be shot is disgraceful.

The majority of knife crime seems to be gang related, tragic yes but not the same as most mass shootings in the US. Sure there’s been multiple random stabbing events but I’m pretty sure they’d have been even worse if guns had been more readily available here.

Absolutely agree. Out of interest does anybody have access (or link to) US gun death statistics that show a breakdown along the lines of domestic, gang related, mass shooting etc?

A world without guns is a world in which no man, not even a member of Seal Team Six, can reasonably expect to prevail over more than one determined attacker at a time

What a dick. Even with a gun, regardless of who you are, you’d be knackered at close quarters. It’s sad, but I can’t see anything changing with their gun laws.

That Sam Harris article is such a load of bollocks

All written before Who Is America… but sounding much like an influence on Baron Cohen.

Guns aren’t bad because knives can be bad. Okey doke.

https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/

Absolutely agree. Out of interest does anybody have access (or link to) US gun death statistics that show a breakdown along the lines of domestic, gang related, mass shooting etc?

Shall we start with toddlers or suicide?

. It’s sad, but I can’t see anything changing with their gun laws.

The kids who turned 18 this year and started voting don’t know a life without mass school shootings, they have done drills since they started school on this. They will be the change

My brother once overpowered 5 rugby players, causing two of them to need facial reconstructive surgery. I assume then that he his harder than a Seal Team 6 member.

Cool story Bro!

are there women in the street getting raped at knifepoint in front of a dozen witnesses in the UK? No

You really havent read it have you?

Harris is a gun owner but advocates significantly greater control on gun ownership than say.. Obama did. He makes a number of good points. You cant disinvent them.

I was just about to post on this i found out as its the lead story on the BBC website.  However I’m sat having breakfast in hotel in Washington.  I’m surrounded by Tv’s showing NBC, FOX, CNN and some local channels.   Only one has mentioned it in the past 30 minutes.  We’ve had pet adoption,  holidays obviously mid term results.  This is so run of the mill it barely makes the news here

They could eat themselves to death instead I suppose. Here’s hoping.

I’m afraid it’s a nonchalant shrug from me. Even this week too high a fraction of the population voted pro Trump for me to attempt to understand them as a society. Kind of hope they rot and fester in their own juices long enough to become an irrelevant country. Even with their propensity to lock each other up, shoot each other or gorge themselves to death it’s still going to take a while to get them down to manageable numbers.

Your brother over powered 5 Rugby Players each with a knife? He could well be “harder” than a Seal Team 6 member. I don’t think Sam is suggesting we employ your brother to look after the world though.

As a former soldier, I know what Sam is referring to. He is saying you cannot reasonably expect to survive a determined knife attack against multiple armed assailants when you are unarmed. Unless of course you’re either John Rambo or Chuck Norris.

As a soldier, one of the rules that lets you open fire is when you feel there is no other way to protect yourself or those it is your duty to protect from the danger of being killed or seriously injured (from the Rules of Engagement Card). If I was ever in the position where I saw someone with a knife threaten me or my troops, and I was armed with both a knife and a gun, I know I wouldn’t drop the gun and ask for a knife fight.

What Sam is saying is exactly the same. He feels it is his duty to protect his family. He knows that the emergency services are unlikely to be able to respond in time to an armed intruder, his best course of action as he see’s it is to use a gun.

His point about someone being raped at knifepoint isn’t very well made. But he is talking about fight or flight, we see this regularly in the world around us. Most people would like to think that if we were in the position where we saw an event like this occur that we would intervene, but would we? Some will, some won’t. Most likely there will be at least a delay while the scene in front of us is translated internally, this delay could all be required for an atrocity to happen. We’ve seen the social experiment where women have been getting abuse from a large male and the majority of passers by do not intervene. If the passer by was armed and the abuse on the lady had magnified to violence there could well be a different outcome.

Sam lives in the States where guns are already prevalent. Intruders are likely to be armed with a knife or a gun. Even if not, they are likely to be younger, stronger etc, so likely to win in any fight scenario. Banning weapons over in the states now isn’t going to help as the people likely to use their weapons in a negative manner wouldn’t turn their unregistered guns in at the local police station.

@W00dster thats what I took from the article. Its fine for the usual “dog whistle” types to jump in but the US is a basket case in terms of guns (more guns than people) it needs a considered and pragmatic approach to policy. That doesnt always go down well on here.

Yes but bullets do a lot more damage than thoughts. I’m trying to recall the last time multiple people died of a serious verbal assault

You are Mr Stevens, Head of Catering and I claim my £5

My brother once overpowered 5 rugby players, causing two of them to need facial reconstructive surgery.

Is this them?

Even this week too high a fraction of the population voted pro Trump for me to attempt to understand them as a society.

What the hell is wrong with you? They didn’t ALL vote Trump? Yet you wish ruin on them all despite that? Do you think you deserve some dreadful fate because you have a Tory government?

That is the argument of an absolute imbecile. I cannot criticise this level of brainlessness enough. Have a word with yourself. And then find someone to teach you what it means to be human.

How actually hard is a Seal Team 6’s member?

Knives: my son used to be in counter terrorism in Australia and they did lots of training for up close and personal adversaries.

If I recall it right their attitude was if a person has a knife and gets closer to you than 6 metres* then it was a double tap job, and no hesitation.

They were taught your survival chances were low if a determined knife wielder got closer (as happened to that poor PC in Westminster).

* I may have the distance wrong, but it was around that.

What the hell is wrong with you? They didn’t ALL vote Trump? Yet you wish ruin on them all despite that? Do you think you deserve some dreadful fate because you have a Tory government?

I used the trump support as an example of a reason why I don’t understand, or I guess respect, them as a society. Plenty of other reasons too – gun laws and attitude towards them being one of them.

Am I being serious about wishing them all a shitty death? Well of course not, anyone with an ounce of common sense will have read it as that. I would however contend the world collectively would be a better place if the USA was viewed as a quirky backwater both economically and culturally to be largely ignored.

Even this week too high a fraction of the population voted pro Trump for me to attempt to understand them as a society.

I suspect that if he was the leader of the tories in the UK, he’d get similar fractions of the population voting for him.

Your brother over powered 5 Rugby Players each with a knife? He could well be “harder” than a Seal Team 6 member. I don’t think Sam is suggesting we employ your brother to look after the world though.
As a former soldier, I know what Sam is referring to. He is saying you cannot reasonably expect to survive a determined knife attack against multiple armed assailants when you are unarmed. Unless of course you’re either John Rambo or Chuck Norris.

I didn’t think we was talking about knife wielding assailants – either way, even with a gun, you’d be doing well to fend off multiple assailants armed with guns unless you were fighting from a highly defended position yes? Family rooms with their plasterboard walls and wood doors aren’t going to be doing you any favours. That Sam thinks the world is a safer place because now, knife wielding gangs can’t storm your house at night but heavily armed Trump voting militia armed with assault weapons, flashbangs, night vision and likely the training in how to use them and assault a house – can – is worrying.

Sam lives in the States where guns are already prevalent. Intruders are likely to be armed with a knife or a gun. Even if not, they are likely to be younger, stronger etc, so likely to win in any fight scenario. Banning weapons over in the states now isn’t going to help as the people likely to use their weapons in a negative manner wouldn’t turn their unregistered guns in at the local police station.

This is a sensible point – but not one that Sam made. Sam was saying that in a world without guns, eg generally the UK, the men there men can’t defend themselves against brutes because they don’t have guns and that “the real (and in Sams opinion, noble) use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.”  –Thomas Carlyle . Not the case, is it? We’re doing just fine without easy access to them, thanks Sam the big fat scaredy cat who clearly wets the bed at night thinking about big men throwing punches.

Maybe there would be less firearms in the hands of criminals in the US, if they treated the distribution of firearms like they do in their war on drugs. But apparently, depending on who you talk to, that war works for drugs – but definitely won’t work for firearms.

That Sam thinks the world is a safer place because now, knife wielding gangs can’t storm your house at night but heavily armed Trump voting militia armed with assault weapons, flashbangs, night vision and likely the training in how to use them and assault a house -can – is worrying.

Good straw man bro. Dont let the fact that the article was written in 2013 stop you 🙂

Sam was saying that in a world without guns, eg generally the UK, the men there men can’t defend themselves against brutes because they don’t have guns and that “the real (and in Sams opinion, noble) use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.”  –Thomas Carlyle . Not the case, is it? We’re doing just fine without easy access to them.

And again. I think with the whole “6 rugby players” thing you probably dont have a lot of credibility.

I don’t really care surfer, but it ended up in a lot of trouble for him…

Sam is wrong on so many levels.

Sam is wrong on so many levels.

Fine but challenge on what he has said, not what he hasnt

Fine but challenge on what he has said, not what he hasnt

Errr

Like most gun owners, I understand the ethical importance of guns and cannot honestly wish for a world without them. I suspect that sentiment will shock many readers. Wouldn’t any decent person wish for a world without guns? In my view, only someone who doesn’t understand violence could wish for such a world. A world without guns is one in which the most aggressive men can do more or less anything they want.

So has the biggest, heaviest bastard in your local pub gone round to your house and raped your wife in front of you yet, surfer? Because you didn’t have a gun? No, probably not.