A thoughtful viewpoint from an Australian........ gun nuts won't be (2025 Update)

The "weekly attacks" are thugs in school being thugs. Some of our schools are in combat zones. Kids in school and people outside those schools carry guns and shoot each other. That is why you hear the details of a shooting every year or two but they say we have one a week. They don't want to get into the details of the others. It might sound racist.

It may be shocking to a UK guy but our cops are always armed and some are obscenely well armed. (automatic weapons, destructive devices and armored vehicles)

They want you to stay in the car for your safety. Especially on the highway when cars are passing by at 70 mph. There have been many accidents with cars stopped both by breakdown or police. Often, the police will approach the car from the passenger side to stay away from passing traffic.

There has also been some drivers with weapons too.

As if that's acceptable and normal.

That is why you hear the

Yes, we have cops at many schools today, because sadly that's become necessary and the new normal. Just a decade ago, only a small subset of schools had any cops, ie those that were in crime ridden, inner cities. Now many schools all across America have them.

This is like the Trump method. Lead things in the wrong direction, lower the standards of everything, and then make that the new normal.

I've said many times the auto example is a good one. We didn't throw up our hands and say, well, more people die from cancer, no need to do anything. And reasonable measures have brought the auto death rates down. The campaign on drunk driving is a good example. With better laws and enforcement, deaths from drunk driving have declined significantly. Fifty years ago, the idea of someone driving drunk wasn't really taken seriously it is. Also note that just like with any new gun control, we all know that we will never stop ALL drunks driving, but we still have saved lives with reasonable measures. It's time to do the same with guns.

IAWTP. Sociopaths(that includes many that post here) should have their guns taken from them. Even if they are "pried from their cold dead hands" - as they often like to say in moments of drunken "machismo".** Sociopaths -1 : Normal People +1 The murder rate would plummet. []'s

PS **Real scenario= Old men with their pants soiled back and front with fear handing over their guns while trembling uncontrollably. And saying "sorry, I forgot I had guns" over and over again, as if that was an excuse for breaking the law. Of course, gangland would have a lot of casualties. None anybody would care about. Call it "collateral damage".

Ah, so you're afraid of guns and the boogeymen at google.

If it wasn't for armed US citizens, the USA would still be the UK's bitch. LOL

If you do some research on refined carbohydrates, insulin levels and coronary artery disease you'll discover that you could be saving tens of millions of people instead of just a few thousand gunshot victims.

FWIW, most of the gunshot victims are jugs street thugs anyway...so who cares?

No, I did my psych test(renewable every 5 years), my safety training (mandatory in Brazil) and I own various. There is NO reason why a safety conscious, law-abiding sane citizen should not own a gun. OTOH only a psychopath would defend the notion that a sociopath should have the same rights. HTH []'s

Normal people care. I assume that by "most" you mean "not all", and include all the mass shooting, robbery and non gang-related victims? Who doesn't care about them? You just failed the psych test. GratZ. []'s

PS When the police come for your guns, use diapers. Less mess for the social workers to clean up.

I bet you haven't had 115 cops killed in the line this year either. (more than the last 7 years in Iraq) We have a whole different class of criminals here. This is not the UK. Unfortunately in a lot of inner city schools the criminality starts pretty young. Of the 45 "school shootings" Zoe is talking about, most involved some other criminal activity. That is why we never heard about it until they rolled it up in a yearly statistic. Two drug gangs beefing over territory is not news. Nor is one kid killing another because he is wearing the wrong color bandanna.

Not as "racist" as your vague accusatorial response. Part of the "desease" is the teriible discrepancy between rich and poor in the USA

- and the almost institutional atempts to keep it that way. Not just financially either.

Crime is a problem in general for some neighborhoods and some demographics. In Ft Myers it was announced that virtually all of the murders occurred in an area where 1% of the population lives. We seem to have a problem dealing with that but it doesn't mean we have to restrict the rights of the 99% because 1% can't stop being savages.

Is it racist to cite the FBI Crime reports?

True

Old data, it's got worse with Trump's "politics". The lower the number, the poorer the majority are in comparison with the top 1%. To the semi literate = GREEN is acceptable. Any other color is not. Kudos to Canada. []'s

The 1% would be the rich guys with mansions and swimming pools? Just a wild guess, of course.

Here in Brazil it's the opposite, most violent crime occurs in poor neighborhoods where the population is either unemployed (unemployment is up to 30% after the right wing coup of 2015, when it was 4.7%) or have a really low income. Independent of color or race.

OTOH non-violent crime (even heinous crimes like tax evasion, declaring bankruptcy so you don't have to pay wages, extortion, bribing government officials, insider trading etc) occurs in the richest zones.

Of course, the two are interconnected. One wouldn't exist without the other. []'s

The goal of socialism is to make everyone equally poor and dependant on the government. Cuba should be your role model but I see they were not rated.

You don't have to be rich to have a pool.

Same here. It may even be more concentrated.