Twice as common as the next method (suffocation/hanging).

How many people wouldn’t have gone through with it had they not had access to firearms?

Everyone has access to some method though.

Everyone has access to some method though.

I’d have more faith in a gun than most other methods. Might be misplaced faith, but faith none the less. How does it fair, statistically speaking, worldwide? If it’s more common in countries with relaxed gun laws then why not include it in the numbers? Would seem foolish not to.

Not wishing to argue, just curious is all.

then 7mins of actual recorded footage of the guy shooting into the crowd..
Bloody BBC sensationalists..

Why is that sensationalism? Simply playing back what happened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

Country – Both sexes – Male rank – Male – Female rank – Female – Male to Female ratio

123
United Kingdom – 7.4 – 122 – 11.7 – 129 – 3.2 – 3.66

48
United States – 12.6 – 46 – 19.5 – 66 – 5.8 – 3.36

The suicide one is odd though. How many people wouldn’t have gone through with it had they not had access to firearms? Can easy access make it simpler for somebody to take their own life?

Yes. When Australia banned most guns, murders went down a lot, and so did suicides.

bencooper^^^ good point, well made.
Too many ‘armchair’ experts pontificating on a subject they know absolutely nothin about.

http://www.theonion.com/article/americans-hopeful-will-be-last-mass-shooting-they–57093

There are an estimated 270 million firearms in the U.S., according to the independent research project called ‘Small Arms Survey.’ That’s 89 firearms per 100 residents, making the U.S. the No. 1 country for gun ownership.

Canada, on the other hand, ranks 13th on the study’s list, with 9.95 million firearms — or 31 per 100 residents.

Moore is right that Canada has a far lower rate of firearm homicides than its neighbour to the south.

According to a report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 11,000 homicides were committed using firearms in the U.S. in 2011. Statistics Canada reports in the same year Canada had 158 homicides committed using firearms.

There’s an attitude thing going on as well. Other countries with high gun ownership don’t suffer nearly the same amount of gun violence.

whatnobeer – Member

There’s an attitude thing going on as well. Other countries with high gun ownership don’t suffer nearly the same amount of gun violence.

social circumstances and attitudes definitely play a part. canadian gun laws are a fair bit different by the looks of it.

Presently, Canadian law classifies firearms into three categories: prohibited, restricted, and non-restricted. Prohibited firearms include military-grade assault weapons such as AK-47s and sawn-off rifles or shotguns. Handguns are generally classified as restricted weapons, while rifles and shotguns are usually non-restricted. The AR-15 rifles used by the San Bernardino suspects is classified as restricted.

tbh I reckon the horse has bolted in the case of america, if the regularity of individual deaths and these mass shootings don’t dissuade them from their views, what the hell will…

http://www.thoughtsandprayersthegame.com/

ffs! 😆 that’s brutal!

http://thegoparcade.com/game/good-guy-with-a-gun

If you want to object to the War vs Life figures look at the changes the deat of servicemen lead to, the tide turned against the war in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan public opinion changed which led to political change. The same people who were hammering Clinton on Benghazi are the ones defending the rights to carry these kind of guns – some lives matter more.
I think the stats show it’s not even half who support the liberal gun policies but it’s a rich and influencial group who refuse to compromise.

What’s always really interesting is you say, do you support gun control and a huge number of people say no. Then you say, how about stopping felons buying them, and they say OK. How about people on the terror watch list? OK. Minors? OK. The mentally ill? OK. How about wait times? OK. Banning full automatics? OK. Armour piercing rounds? OK. Mercury rounds? OK. But no gun control except all the gun control we like which doesn’t count

The full auto thing is weird. You can’t buy an automatic but you can buy an AR15 and a bump stock and an oversized magazine designed for better high speed feeding all in one shop, in one transaction. It’s like if we had our gun sale control but didn’t bother with all the restrictions on conversion kits, and had high street stores selling blank firers and upgrade breeches, or deactivated firearms and all the bits to reactivate it.

And it’s not like you can play the home defence card, an AR with a bump stock is absolutely useless for home defence because it’s got no useful burst control, it’s for emptying your magazine at things- if you want to maximise the risk to bystanders it’s ideal. A trigger crank is the same but more so, with less accuracy to boot. Good fun at the range I’m sure but that’s the only use other than murdering a bunch of people from some distance.

I remember a brilliant video from a US gun shop owner, sat at a table with a little 9mm and a big ugly pump shotgun, saying “If you own anything apart from these 2 things and you say it’s for home defence you are a liar, a fantastist or an incompetent.” Little easy to handle pistol for convenience and simplicity when you’re half asleep and you need to shoot an intruder your dog by mistake. Big ugly shotgun for terrifying people. Everything else? Wrong tool.

This whole thing is absolutely horrific, and I appreciate that motives are not known yet – but was anyone else slightly relieved that the perpetrator wasn’t a refugee/immigrant/non-caucasian?

The US feels like a powder-keg at the moment….. I’m not sure what would have happened had this guy been either black or Middle-Eastern/North African, but I’m sure that there would have been far more anger and fewer “thoughts and prayers”.

The gun debate issue is virtually pointless – the pro-gun lobby have so effectively obfuscated the debate, that they can’t even get approval to run effective background checks for gun sales. It’s ridiculous, and a damming example of how money can skew politics so far away from something so clearly in the public interest. People are pushing for school teachers to be armed – how f’ed-up can you get?

Sorry if that is a stupid question but in my head I can’t understand how one man can have killed and injured so many people from so far away. (It is just too insane in my head to understand)

As others said, full auto weapon, big crowd – you don’t need to particularly aim – he wasn’t even firing controlled bursts. And because the people in that concert weren’t accustomed to getting shot at – they mostly just stood around filming with their mobiles or lay down in big groups thus creating big targets… hoping that a lower profile would protect them whilst rounds were splashing all around them from a vantage point.

What’s always really interesting is you say, do you support gun control and a huge number of people say no. Then you say, how about stopping felons buying them, and they say OK. How about people on the terror watch list? OK. Minors? OK. The mentally ill? OK. How about wait times? OK. Banning full automatics? OK. Armour piercing rounds? OK. Mercury rounds? OK. But no gun control except all the gun control we like which doesn’t count

Agreed – when Americans hear “gun control” they think “gun bans”. Part of the problem is that lobbyists are effectively blocking any incremental, common-sense evolution of firearm controls.

I never understand the NRAs obsession with blaming mental illness for this kind of attack, while simultaneously blocking efforts to prevent somebody buying a gun at a jumble-sale without any kind of background check.

Assault rifles

Campus Carry – NRA

Just looking at the NRA website as I can’t sleep – and just wow, they really are a bunch of ****

Let them crack on, it’s the price they pay for the right to bear arms.

They are a democracy after all…

oldmanmtb – Member
Let them crack on, it’s the price they pay for the right to bear arms.

They are a democracy after all…
Not in this respect, they can’t force it through due to the massive budgets of the arms factories.

Innocent people pay the price.

The nra website is very special. It includes nuggets like this

Gun control supporters are wrong to claim that “assault weapons” are used in most mass shootings. While the media focus on this false narrative, mass shootings have been committed with firearms of all types, and without firearms of any type.

Mass shootings committed without firearms?

Anyways a good time to share this Jim Jeffries clip. He absolutely nails the issue. (Worth watching part 2 as well. Nsfw)

[video]https://youtu.be/0rR9IaXH1M0[/video]

…and the victims, just a cross section of regular people…

victims

Mass shootings committed without firearms?

cross bows?

From that first NRA link:

“Americans own over eight million AR-15s and buy hundreds of thousands of new ones every year.”

Wow

The nra website is very special

Nearly as ‘special’ as Armed America Radio 😯

If banning the sale of these guns is too hard they could start by introducing laws that say every gun has to be painted barbie pink and rather than being called AR15 should instead be called Unicorn Cuddle Defender.

Would be great to see a NRA redneck defending his constitution right with a pink Unicorn Cuddle Defender

From the guardian feed…

Two of the survivors of the Las Vegas mass shooting, have defended US gun laws.

Caren Mansholt told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that she crouched down as low as possible as multiple rounds of bullets were fired into the crowd from a hotel room where 23 guns were found.

She said such attacks would not be prevented by tighter gun laws.

“I do believe there is a time and a place for gun ownership. I believe that we have the right to protect ourselves as needed,” she said.

Rusty Dees, who was with Mansholt at the time, said: “The biggest problem for me and for many was that we didn’t hear anybody returning fire. I’m very concerned that we had no one outside to protect us. Unfortunately for me being unarmed and unable to do a whole lot decided it was time to get out of there.”

Echoing an argument put forward by the former Fox News broadcaster Bill O’Reilly, Dees added: “It’s a tragic cost of freedom, that people can do bad things. If you can find a gun law that would prevent this from happening I could sign up today, but I am proud of our country’s second amendment rights and I’m glad we are allowed to defend ourselves.”

The biggest problem was that no one was returning fire?! And this is a cost of freedom?! 😯

The funny thing is we all type posts trying different ways to articulate the problem, but what it boils down to is the fact that too many Americans who are in positions of power are just spectacularly thick.

The speed at which deliberate misinformation can spread is unbelievable:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/02/las-vegas-shooting-facebook-google-fake-news-shooter

At the same time, a sham Facebook page pretending to be Antifa claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the goal of the shooter was to murder “Trump supporting fascist dogs”.

I can’t quite work out whether this second one is just plain google results, or targeted ads. If just normal Google results, it must be almost impossible for them to monitor.

Google said in a statement: “Unfortunately, early this morning we were briefly surfacing an inaccurate 4chan website in our Search results for a small number of queries. Within hours, the 4chan story was algorithmically replaced by relevant results. This should not have appeared for any queries, and we’ll continue to make algorithmic improvements to prevent this from happening in the future.”

The biggest problem was that no one was returning fire?!

I also did a little WTF double-take when I heard that this morning.

It’s been said plenty of times but when even watered down legislation didn’t make it through after Sandy Hook, the debate was over in so far as leading to any kind of action. Enough powerful people believe this a price worth paying.

Next year there’ll be another few of these – but this time they won’t even be able to hear where the **** bullets are coming from.

The biggest problem was that no one was returning fire?!

Aye I’m sure 500 people freely shooting up the mandalay (and in any other direction they thought fire was coming from) in response would have the sensible option…

“The biggest problem for me and for many was that we didn’t hear anybody returning fire. I’m very concerned that we had no one outside to protect us. Unfortunately for me being unarmed and unable to do a whole lot decided it was time to get out of there.”

some band there had concealed weapons and they did not get them out for fear they police would think they were the shooter [ and he has changed his mind on gun laws]

Even so the gun you would need to take out someone 300 metres away is not going to be easily concealed on you.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/02/las-vegas-gun-control-caleb-keeter-josh-abbott-band

Its one of those we ll know the solution is for their relationship with guns to be like ours but there is no way to get them there so these events will continue to occur.

The biggest problem was that no one was returning fire?!

And that’s what people who want gun control in the USA are up against, an endemic belief that swimming in a sea of guns is a good thing.

It’s completely and utterly barking.

Aye I’m sure 500 people freely shooting up the mandalay (and in any other direction they thought fire was coming from) in response would have the sensible option…

That was my first thought, just open up in the general direction of hotel with 2000 rooms or whatever.

They’ve all seen too many films.

As with so many things, Bill Hicks nailed the gun proponents’ argument:

But there’s no connection, and you’d be a fool and a communist to make one. There’s no connection between having a gun and shooting someone with it, and not having a gun and not shooting someone…

I’m assuming off the back of this that tensions around the Korean peninsula will ease quickly as the US will stop trying to prevent the other guy with the bad hair from getting nukes cos, y’know, nuclear weapons don’t kill people – people kill people.

This interview with gun lobbyist is so frustrating.
(John Oliver Daily Show – first of three part special on Gun Control)

[video]https://youtu.be/9pOiOhxujsE[/video]

you’d be a fool and a communist to make one. There’s no connection between having a gun and shooting someone with it, and not having a gun and not shooting someone

they are right people without guns shoot people with them every day of the year and everyone knows you dont need a gun to shoot somone with gun. 😯

Its one of those – its not linear as most people with guns wont shoot people but having them freely available everywhere means that when someone will they can easily get a gun, easily modify it to take lots of shots and then easily kill this number with only a modicum of forethought and planning
The only solution is less guns in society as then fewer nutters have guns.

The only solution is less FEWER guns in society

FFS!

That was my first thought, just open up in the general direction of hotel with 2000 rooms or whatever.

And then the people in those rooms, many of whom would also be armed would think they were under attack, and start to open up in the direction of the concert goers…….

I wonder if that was ever a likelihood, in which case how many could have been killed or injured then 😯