Posts by Danyl Mclauchlan
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I think rodgerd was saying that these rare events are not really where the problem of gun violence lies in the US and even with effective gun control that's not going to stop the most determined people causing events like this.
We're always going to have crazy people in our society and they'll always do crazy things. Incredibly, the worst school massacre in US history was back in 1927 and guns had nothing to do with it.
But guns make wiping out a bunch of people incredibly easy. As a clumsy analogy it's like leaving a big ol' glass of poison on the floor of a kindergarten and refusing to move it on the grounds that 'the kids will just find some other way to hurt themselves'.
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Timothy McVeigh? The Atlanta Olympic bomber? IRA bombings in the UK? Attempting to blow up a nightclub full of "promiscous women" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/5016274.stm)? The nail bomb killings in the UK? That's just off the top of my head.
And all of them were terrorists who carried out well planned, meticulous attacks with deliberate agendas and careful selection of targets - the exact opposite of random mass murders like Aramoana and Virginia-Tech.
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A blogger on Andrew Sullivans site has a useful response to the cries of 'why didn't they lock down the campus'?:
The overwhelming majority of murders that take place on campus (or anywhere else) are not a prelude to a mass killing. Should we really act as if they were, because it might prevent the 0.001% that are? Shutting down campus is not free; if nothing else, it absorbs a huge number of police resources that could otherwise be used to track down the killer in the vast majority of cases where the killer is still at loose, armed, dangerous, and not planning to kill himself. In this particular case, shutting down campus would have been the right answer. But in 99.999% of cases, it would have been the wrong answer, and would have placed the public at greater risk, as well as producing mass hysteria on campus. Castigating the administrators for getting it wrong, or rushing to enact legislation that ensures administrators do the wrong thing in most cases, is bad decision-making. Not that this will prevent us from doing just that.
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I think that's one of the dumbest aspects of reactions to situations like Aramoana. A sufficiently motivated and focused nutjob can and will find a way to wreck mayhem if he or she so wishes.
But can you point to any specific examples of this happening?
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I think people in these parts who want to get their sneer about America's 'gun culture' - and paint a picture of Rambos on every corner - should ask themselves why the events depicted in this movie still touched some very raw emotions sixteen years later.
The obvious difference between tragedies like Aramoana, the Port Arthur Massacre, Dunblane ect and the constant mass-murders in the US is that in other countries these massacres act as a wake-up call and lead to much stricter gun-control laws and a subsequent - touch wood - decline in random mass-killings. This never happens in the US and they're now at the absurd point where the debate is about whether giving everybody more guns will help prevent these tragedies.
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I was in Houston when Columbine happened and more than a little freaked out when most of my workmates explained to me that it would never have happened if all the teachers and senior students had been carrying concealed guns.
My incredulous response was that arming teachers and students in case someone went crazy with a gun was met with equal incredulity from my workmates. 'You think everyone should just walk around unarmed so anyone can shoot us?' Most people had handguns in their offices and cars. Our IT manager kept what he claimed was a live grenade in the top drawer of his desk. It really is a different world.
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Do you have a link to the old kiwiblog thread Shaz? I'd be morbidly curious to reread it.
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Did someone mention Carlos Castenada?
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And recent comments on kiwiblog are a salient reminder that it's not just those on the right who are batshit crazy
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The only reason I allow comments on the blog these days is because they provide a sort of archived commentary of the state of mind of some parts of the right. That state of mind is truly scary.
If they weren't abusing you in your threads they'd be outside someplace bothering the pigeons, so I think it's better for everyone to stick with the status quo.