And now Finland

jason_els

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Has anyone actually ever invaded Kansas? Apart from the modern Americans of course.

I grew-up on a farm and guns were part of every day life. Guns were used to shoot vermin, euthanise animals, and hunting. In my mom's day rifle club members at the high school would bring their rifles with them on the bus.

We don't worry about Kansas. Guns are kept as the final guarantor of freedom against tyranny and personal defense. In many parts of rural America a police call will take upwards of half an hour for someone to reach your home; longer or not at all in bad weather. Have some whacko banging on your door or breaking in and see if you don't run to the closet for a shotgun before you pick-up a phone and pray someone answers and arrives before the intruder gets in or comes upstairs. When my mother is alone in her remote house I feel much better that she has a gun and knows how to use it. Any man could physically overpower. The gun equalizes her chances.

I realize that our societies are very different and respect that.
 

Drifterwood

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A couple of things Jason.

I live on a farm in a remote rural part of Britain, similar to that you describe, and I grew up with guns as you describe and have them as you describe for vermin etc, but I recently had a half day interview by a senior experienced Officer to determine my suitability for a license and they are securely locked away which means that they are of little use if I had an intruder.

Secondly, do you think that a few rifles would really stop the armoury available to your own government if the leader went ape? And really what are the chances of that? I imagine that Mr. McVeigh felt that the Tyranny had arrived. Isn't this just sentimental nonsense? A bit like killing Scotsmen with Bows in York?
 

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Every time something like this happens after the fact we read the long list of warning signs that were ignored, I was unaware of the cases Dong had cited but Charles Whitman even told the campus psychiatrist that he felt the urge to start shooting people with a deer rifle. We treat psychiatric disease retroactively, we should start treating it when the warning signs manifest themselves.
 

whatireallywant

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Every time something like this happens after the fact we read the long list of warning signs that were ignored, I was unaware of the cases Dong had cited but Charles Whitman even told the campus psychiatrist that he felt the urge to start shooting people with a deer rifle. We treat psychiatric disease retroactively, we should start treating it when the warning signs manifest themselves.

YES!!! It's really bad when the schools are totally ignoring such blatant warnings like that!

I also agree with something that Jason_els said previously about kids who are "outsiders" in school. Granted, most kids who are outsiders/bullied do not wind up shooting up the school (I was an outcast and bullied myself, but did not wind up doing anything like that, although I did have some VERY violent and bloodthirsty revenge fantasies when I was in school...)
 

jason_els

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A couple of things Jason.

I live on a farm in a remote rural part of Britain, similar to that you describe, and I grew up with guns as you describe and have them as you describe for vermin etc, but I recently had a half day interview by a senior experienced Officer to determine my suitability for a license and they are securely locked away which means that they are of little use if I had an intruder.

Maybe you should keep your gun locker in an upstairs bedroom? Contrary to our western movies, most people here don't keep them over their mantle.

Secondly, do you think that a few rifles would really stop the armoury available to your own government if the leader went ape? And really what are the chances of that? I imagine that Mr. McVeigh felt that the Tyranny had arrived. Isn't this just sentimental nonsense? A bit like killing Scotsmen with Bows in York?

First question: Yes and no. Much would depend on what the armed forces themselves did. In any coup situation you have loyalists and dissenters. Not all the armed forces would follow the president nor would all the people. I'm much less worried about an APC rumbling down my block than being able to contribute to guerrilla resistance and my personal protection.

Second question: Bush losing his marbles? More than half the country thinks he already has and for numerous reasons ranging from the complete failure to guard the southern border to violating constitutional rights to starting an unnecessary war we had no plan to finish. He's not the most stable person the presidency has seen either. We may be at war with Iran before his term expires. A few doctors have suggested his complete incoherency in unscripted situations (and even then) may be the result of pre-senile dementia.

Third question: Americans are becoming more and more aware of attempts to create a North American union with a united currency and our constitution scrapped to do it. I think most Americans won't tolerate such a thing despite what the powers that be say. There may be split, civil war, or a revolution all over again. The brain trust that started this country gave us a brilliant constitution and many wise words.

Some of those words urge us never to trust the government even if it is, "of the people." We are a revolutionary people and we have always distrusted the government of the day no matter who runs it. It was guns that allowed this country to be formed and had the average American not been permitted guns during that period we'd still be singing God Save the Queen. Coups and whack job leaders happen sometimes even in the most stable countries.
[SIZE=-1]When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

That was said by Thomas Jefferson. Guns help keep the government in fear and that is how we like it.
[/SIZE]
 

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In a situation where there's some nut with a gun and me with a gun I think the nut is going to 'win' every time, he's got less of a reluctance to shoot than I have, while I'm still yacking on about please put the gun down he's already shot.

Guns don't shoot people, people shoot people - but how much easier is it to run amok and kill a group of people with a gun than it is with a knife?
 

Gillette

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Guns don't shoot people, people shoot people - but how much easier is it to run amok and kill a group of people with a gun than it is with a knife?

You'd think this was a pretty obvious thing to understand, wouldn't you.

Brace yourself. The answer last time was straight out of a John Woo film.
 

rawbone8

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It did happen though it was rare, two came to mind:

Whitman at the University of Texas in 1966 and,
The Fullerton library massacre in 1972

But yes, the increase in such incidents is quite recent.

The statement about the increased media attention given to violent crimes leading to a perception that they are higher now than in the 1960s and 1970s isn't inaccurate. True, media attention is higher today and it leads to a perception that violence is more prevalant today, but contrary to popular belief, overall violent crime rates today are about the same as they were in the early/mid 70s. Since a peak in the early 90s US violent crime rates have fallen steeply.

There's plenty of documentation around.

For example:

All Violent crime rates per 100,000

1973 - 470
1992 - 757
2005 - 469

Murder per 100,000

1950 - 4.6
1960 - 5.1
1970 - 7.9
1980 - 10.2
1990 - 9.4
2005 - 5.6

Source, US Bureau of Justice and FBI Uniform Crime reports and others.

Note, crime collection statistical gathering methods changed in the early 1990s so I don't know how much this may skew the figures.

What no doubt came as a shock to those living through the sixties who saw a tripling in violent crime rates between 1963 to the mid 70s. In contrast, the period from the 1940s to the early 60s were among the most 'law abiding' in living memory.

I think that David Foot, a Canadian academic and author, produced compelling arguments using demographic analysis to explain the crime rates rising during the period illustrated above, and decreasing rates in more recent decades. I think violent crime probably follows a similar trend. Here is a synopsis:


&#8220;Demographics explains about two-thirds of everything&#8221;

In 1996, David K. Foot&#8217;s Boom Bust and Echo: How to Profit from the Coming Demographic Shift became a best seller and helped popularize public discussion on issues related to the aging of Canada&#8217;s baby boomers.

Canadian society was transformed by the baby boom generation, which Foot defines as those born in the two decades following WW II (1947-1966). This birth cohort was of unprecedented size and persons born in this generation totalled 9.8 million people or almost 33&#37; of the Canadian population as of the 1996 census. As this huge birth-cohort flooded in succession through one public institution after another, a massive restructuring began to occur, beginning first in the pediatric wards, then the kindergartens, the elementary and secondary schools, before finally spilling into the universities and the job market.

An issue that Foot also talks about, although it got less play in the media, is the impact of the aging boomers on crime rates.

Demography and crime

The baby boom had a tremendous impact on Canada&#8217;s criminal justice system as boomers began in the early 1960s to enter into their most crime-prone years. Traditionally, North American society&#8217;s youth population, those from their teens through to about thirty, are the highest crime-risk group. Baby boomers began to enter their teenage years in 1960 and didn&#8217;t reach thirty until 1977. The youngest of the boomers, meanwhile, only began entering their teens in 1979 and didn&#8217;t reach thirty until 1996. The boomer generation therefore passed through their high crime-risk years over a period spanning from 1960 to 1996. As the large number of boomers swelled this crime-prone age group, crime levels began to increase. Crime rates increased throughout the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

Now, however, all the boomers have aged beyond thirty and crime rates have been dropping since the early 1990s. One reason for this is that the follow-on (i.e., the baby bust and boomer echo) generations are much smaller in size so there is a smaller high crime-risk population.
Rogue behaviour by mentally unbalanced persons, especially young males, will always be with us in society and always has been with us. Running amok is a well established term. The opportunity to exploit these heinous acts in media makes the impact so much more a part of our lives, even though we personally have no tangible connection (usually) to the community where it happens, or perhaps a tangental connection.

The internet is changing that. On a community like this one we do see vivid connections, as with Mindseye being directly involved in the chaos and dreadful losses at Virginia Tech.

I knew a college friend who had experienced the horror first-hand when a 16 year old boy went berserk and went on a shooting and killing rampage at his high school in Brampton, Ontario in 1975. That unprecedented event's shocking influence lead to tougher gun control laws in Canada.

We share the outrage and grief, but it is still very, very unlikely to happen to one of us.

Centennial Secondary School Shooting
 

dong20

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I think that David Foot, a Canadian academic and author, produced compelling arguments using demographic analysis to explain the crime rates rising during the period illustrated above, and decreasing rates in more recent decades. I think violent crime probably follows a similar trend.

It's a sad indictment of Baby Boomers! If true, it would appear they were more prolific if rather less imaginative than todays villains.

I was unaware of the Canadian shooting incident you mentioned.
 

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Some of those words urge us never to trust the government even if it is, "of the people." We are a revolutionary people and we have always distrusted the government of the day no matter who runs it. It was guns that allowed this country to be formed and had the average American not been permitted guns during that period we'd still be singing God Save the Queen. Coups and whack job leaders happen sometimes even in the most stable countries.
[SIZE=-1]When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=-1]That was said by Thomas Jefferson. Guns help keep the government in fear and that is how we like it.[/SIZE]

That's all well and good, (if rather twee) but it's not the 18th Century any more. It's possible that an 18th Century mindset, its arguments and methodolgies may not work so well with 21st Century problems, some of which I believe are rooted in the perpetuation of practices and beliefs of those early days.

Many nations are today paying the price for having embraced flawed (if expedient) strategies generations ago in order to tackle problems which, without those methods may well not even exist today. That's not to blame the use of what may have been the best wisdom of the day, but that was then, this is now.

Perhaps, just perhaps it's time for a re-think?
 

rawbone8

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It's a sad indictment of Baby Boomers! If true, it would appear they were more prolific if rather less imaginative than todays villains.

Yeah. We're lame.:rolleyes:

The baby boomers are/were no different from other generations except that their numbers overburdened the systems that were in place. I think they were predictably as criminal or violent at certain ages in their development as any other generation. Their prolific population made the difference in crime rates.

I think the point is that the tendency to engage in impulsive illegal acts is observed to be age related, and that most people at risk to offend grow out of it as they mature, get jobs, marry, take on responsibilities, or get incarcerated (and thus age beyond the wonder years). Testosterone and immature brain development together with a short fuse (and often alcohol) make for volatility. That is constant.

Likewise, we see the auto insurance industry addressing the age of younger male drivers with costly or prohibitively expensive premiums that are related to risk associated with their cohort. Presumably they have studies and statistics that the underwriters use to assess risk.

Rogue behaviour like the teen in Finland is what I think of as exceptional to broader demographic behaviours. It's mental illnesses and opportunity.

I was unaware of the Canadian shooting incident you mentioned.

The Brampton shooting was huge news here in Canada and was, as far as I know, unprecedented. The massacre of female engineering students at [SIZE=-1]&#201;cole Polytechnique[/SIZE] in Montreal in 1989 was another act of madness that probably has more infamy.
 

jason_els

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That's all well and good, (if rather twee) but it's not the 18th Century any more. It's possible that an 18th Century mindset, its arguments and methodolgies may not work so well with 21st Century problems, some of which I believe are rooted in the perpetuation of practices and beliefs of those early days.

Many nations are today paying the price for having embraced flawed (if expedient) strategies generations ago in order to tackle problems which, without those methods may well not even exist today. That's not to blame the use of what may have been the best wisdom of the day, but that was then, this is now.

Perhaps, just perhaps it's time for a re-think?

Tyranny is alive and well in the 21st century in various countries everywhere. So are despots, the power-hungry, and those would usurp my rights to serve their selfish ends. Until tyranny disappears, I'm sticking to the system that keeps it out of my life. The attitude of it can't happen here has never served any people well.
 

F_Man

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Yet shootings such as these are rare and this sort of event is unheard of in Finland. Should the millions of other Finns who responsibly own handguns be deprived of their right to handgun ownership because of a mentally ill student who abused that right? Do you think he wouldn't have just chosen a rifle or shotgun instead?
Only in America would anybody feel "deprived" for not being able to own weapons for no reason.
Statistics show that in Finland more than 30&#37; own weapons while the average in the rest of Europe is around 3 %.


How does removing the gun remove the desire to commit such an act? It doesn't. Address the cause, not the method. Honestly, it's like fighting terrorism. You cannot fight terrorism with guns. You must remove the desire in people who feel so extremely disenfranchised that they become terrorists.

You are right, stricter weapon laws don't stop terrorism, but it can stop sudden rages from becoming massacres.
When you fly off the handle, you use what you have access to.

The killer signed up at a downtown Helsinki commercial shooting club on October 19, payed the fee, no questions, and got his membership card. Never ever visitited the place again. On November 2 he buys his gun, as the membership validates it.

His schoolmates describe him as a smart, intelligent guy, but increasingly isolated. In history classes he was said to have had "wild extreme ideas".
In his suicide note to his family, and in his net postings all this fall, and just an hour before the killing, he claims his superiority and goal of eliminating inferior creatures of a rotten society. He wanted to "better the world" and chose a twisted tragical way to express it. - He was a net pal with a 14/15-year old guy in the USA who this year was arrested after he was found planning a similar school killing. His alarming mental condition and the exceedingly evident violence-bound behavior was well documented in YouTube since last spring.
Only this fall was his account closed, but he opened a new one a week after, and announced there what was to come.

The net world has created an incredible way to exist, to become your reality. I find it mad that nobody who was reading his more and more irrational and threathening posts reacted before it was too late.

Commercial shooting clubs will face scrutiny for reason here. Finland with its dark winters is, indeed, depression prone, with a high suicide rate for young guys. His was really a suicide, he wanted to do it real public and wide.
 

Drifterwood

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May as well attempt to edit Shakespeare. Sorry Drifterwood but you are no Thomas Jefferson. Call me when you found a country some day. We'll talk more about it then.

We don't use Shakespeare for our constitution.

And I wouldn't want to be a Jefferson, unlike McVeigh of course who was wearing a "Tree of Liberty..." T shirt when he murdered for freedom.

I agree with Dong, Jefferson's idealization of the yeoman farmer is now an anachronism, yet it still seems to have such a strong pull on the US psyche, well with Republicans anyway.

Sadly there aren't so many countries left to steal anymore :biggrin1:, but I'll let you know if I find one.
 

jumbo747jet

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Do you deny that an armed person stands a better chance of survival against another armed person? Had the police arrived immediately and managed to enter the school would they have done any differently? You call the police precisely because they carry firearms. They can defend themselves against an armed man. Unarmed people cannot.

OK, I think I understand the way you are thinking.
If the reason why people call the police is that they carry firearms, there would be no need for police if everybody walked around with guns.
I must say that it doesn't sound very appealing to live in a society where everybody is armed.

What I want to know is why anybody feels he or she needs to be armed. What is he or she so scared of ?
Surely the entire country can't be infested with vermin.

Don't you think that statistics alone show that liberal gun rules result in more deaths ?
Having a large number of weapons hasn't exactly kept crime levels down.
 

rawbone8

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[...]
Commercial shooting clubs will face scrutiny for reason here. Finland with its dark winters is, indeed, depression prone, with a high suicide rate for young guys. His was really a suicide, he wanted to do it real public and wide.

Suicide is at the crux of these things, isn't it? But a mere suicide may seem to be kind of lame and pointless, and an admission of his personal weakness.

Yes, he wanted to make his suicide grandiose and memorable. These shooters sought to perversely justify their exit in a shocking way that acts out the large scale of rage they feel about the world they do not fit into.


I don't think the sport/shooting clubs merit blame for this. Scrutiny is perhaps justified, but detecting a mentally unbalanced young man is asking that they have some kind of psychiatric assessment. How workable is that? Medical privacy issues also make it difficult to know who is sane enough to be a responsible gun operator or owner. Crime records are usually the only public records that are available, as far as I know.

Should people have to prove they are sane to merit getting a firearms license?
 

braumeister

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In a situation where there's some nut with a gun and me with a gun I think the nut is going to 'win' every time, he's got less of a reluctance to shoot than I have, while I'm still yacking on about please put the gun down he's already shot.

Guns don't shoot people, people shoot people - but how much easier is it to run amok and kill a group of people with a gun than it is with a knife?

I remember reading about the Tsuyama massacre where the killer used a sword in a mass killing. I tried finding more information about it, and the Wikipedia page is pretty sketchy. It mentions that the killer used both a sword and an old rifle, but it does give a breakdown of how many of the 29 people killed were killed with what weapon. I haven't been able to find an English language web page that gives more information.

Tsuyama massacre - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So I'm not sure that one counts.

How about the Rwandan genocide? Every account I've read about that indicates that large numbers of people were hacked to death with machetes. The Wikipedia article mentioning some army units using rifles is the first time I've seen anything indicating weapons other than machetes were used.

Rwandan Genocide - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are many people who freeze up and/or panic when faced with violence. They don't see it, it's unusual, and dangerous. I think mass killings with knives would be easier than you think.