This happened not even an hour away from where I grew up. Some guy dressed in all black opened fire in a classroom filled with 150+ students at Northern Illinois University today. 17 injuries. Five fatalities, as of 7 p.m. Killer pulled the trigger on himself.
I'm appalled. I feel like the only thing I hear these days are horrifying incidents like Virginia Tech, Columbine, or the Von Maur in Omaha. And now at NIU??
What's your opinion on gun control? How do we keep guns out of the hands of crazy criminals while still protecting our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms?
-10-key princess
4 comments:
Not to provoke a flame war on our heavily trafficked blog...but here are two questions I'd like to ask our readers:
1. Under which circumstances and to handle which expectations was the 2nd amendment created?
2. Something seems to be provoking American kids to do this while other nations kids are not. What is the main problem, and how do we fix it?
There's a difference between gun control and crime control. I support crime control. I'm not an avid proponent of gun control. Here's why.
According to this article (http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Story?id=3083618) crime increased in the UK after they enacted strict gun control laws.... because criminals don't obey the law. The result of the ban: fewer people could protect themselves from these criminals.
When handled responsibly, gun ownership has been proven to help actually reduce crime. As citizens, we can help keep crime down. Those who are properly trained have a lower error rate in shooting innocents than our trained law enforcement officers (2% vs. 11%, per http://www.gunowners.org/sk0802.htm). There are a lot of other interesting points on this fact sheet.
I don't own a gun. But I want the option to own one if I feel my life is threatened in any way. I want to know that there won't be laws that will prevent me from defending myself should there be a riot, looting issue (ie Katrina), robber, or plain old weirdo running around my house and threatening me and my family. I mean, didn't anyone see JLo's performance in "Enough?"
My opinion on the 2nd amendment in our modern day world: Ronald Reagan said "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction." As a protective umbrella, I think the 2nd amend. was written in so we could protect ourselves from the possible "next generation" tyranny our own government could be headed towards at a moment's notice. The Founding Fathers wanted the security and freedom to be passed down through the generations for our own peace and prosperity.
What interests me about the three shootings you mentioned is that all of these kids were in some way "troubled," yet didn't fit any particular "profile." What is the profile of a potential shooter? Someone who is off his meds? Someone who is a troubled foster kid but wants to be famous? Teenagers who want to eradicate the American race and way of life and have expressed so in journals?
I mean, if these aren't warning signs enough, we aren't paying attention like we should. Like Janos said - parents, godparents, teachers, pastors, friends, neighbors, siblings - ANYONE?? Where were they?
-SM
Switzerland has the second highest gun ownership rate in the world, next to the US. Until recently, they had some of the lowest murder rates in the world.
Until recently.
Now they're reconsidering their gun control laws. Typically, after universal conscription, Swiss men were able to purchase their weapon/ammunition from the government and store it in their homes.
Things have changed for the Swiss, though. They're reporting mass shootings, but certainly not to the extent that we experience in the states. While not part of this statistic, it should be noted that suicide rates are highest in Switzerland... certainly there's some correlation.
They're considering adopting some sort of legislature that will allow storage of weapons at home, but not ammunition. What do you think about that? Would that work here? How would the NRA perceive this? Gun control advocates?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,480545,00.html
-10kp
Yeah, I've got nothing...restricting gun sales doesn't appear to directly affect crime. Someone needs to set some independent microeconomists on this!
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