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The issue is mentally ill individuals having immediate access to guns. Please correct me but this kid could have bought some of these guns in a gun dealer?

His mother certainly did, which is as bad and very much proven so!

Yes.

The legal age for buying guns in the US varies by state; I think in his state it is 18. He was 20.

This sounds to me like an argument for removing guns from society. The fewer guns in society the less force needed. I understand the typical gun owner's response is that such restrictions won't keep bad people from getting guns. The reality is there's a groundswell of interest in restricting access to assault weapons. The NRA has had no comment (not even to express condolences) since the massacre and many politicians (even conservatives) are expressing support for reinstating the assault weapons ban. That's also the reality. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Not to let facts get in the way of a perfectly admirable rant, but there were no automatic weapons involved in the CT shootings, nor in any of the other school cases mentioned. Nor are automatic weapons a significant statistical factor in US crimes generally. As noted earlier in this thread, virtually all US gun crime is committed with firearms that fire one round with each trigger pull -- not "hundreds of bullets per minute."

Yes, it is insane, but that's the reality of America - there are lots of insane "cowboys" who can't imagine anything beyond paranoid violence as a way of controlling behavior.

There's a theory that since the current population of the US is largely based on immigration, and part of the lure for immigrants was that it promised a great deal of personal freedom, plus a huge amount of physical space in which to act out, it has attracted over time an unusually high proportion of people who were the malcontents, the misfits, the sociopaths, and so forth in the countries that they left. The result is that the cultural DNA of the US (and, who knows, maybe the real DNA) has an unusually prominent strain of social paranoia that takes many forms. I think there may be some truth in that.

I think suitcase-sized nuclear weapons for the kiddies would be even better. That's the best kind of "mutually assured destruction" we've currently got, after all, and we all want the best for the children, right? But if that's impractical, stuff like poison gas would work, in a pinch.

*Washington put one over on Lord Cornwallis at the Siege and Battle of Yorktown in 1781
(* with the help of Comte de Rochambeau and de Grasse) ... up till then the ruling Brits wouldn’t let the local farmers bear arms ... with the result that the victorious new regime of rebels slapped in a 2nd amendment into the US Constitution which read as follows:

As ratified by the States and authenticated by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State:
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”.
Now almost everybody wants the populace to be disarmed (take guns off the street) ... but a pipe dream ... rather like the 1930s Prohibition Law ... any tightening up on booze would only lead to the menace going underground ... and give birth to another Al Capone.
(The movie “The Untouchables” with Costner, Connery and Garcia,
paints a vivid picture of the result of bad legislation ).

Some of us like to dream that Cornwallis won the Battle of Yorktown and sent Washington scuttling back to his Mum ...thus, no need for guns.

PS I'm a Brit (don't you know).

Lots of varied opinions on this topic exist, obviously.

However, I can't imagine anyone DISAGREEING with the notion that magazine racks (I guess that's what they're called) containing 100 + bullets have no place in the general public.

The tragedy at CONN would have never reached that scale had it been unlawful (I know...a whole host of other issues) to own/sell/manufacture such ridiculous capabilities.
Say the killer's gun could only shoot 5 bullets before he had to reload- highly likely he would have been tackled to the ground during that time.

Regardless of what one thinks about guns vs. no guns...why the (blank) are such racks even manufactured and available to the public? I don't get it. I say start THERE.

Wrong I'm afraid. The issue IS guns. Let's face it, there will always be mentally ill people, we can't find and cure them all. But we can make it harder for them to follow their impulse. Without easy access to guns, the kid would not have been able to inflict damage on the level that he and previous school-shooters have. I am sure that most bullied or depressed kids fantasise at one point or another of getting revenge by shooting up the school, it is a natural feeling for a powerless victim to have, the difference being that in countries where they don't have guns the kids can't make it a reality. At best they can use a hammer or a knife or something, which at least limits the potential damage. But surely most kids would prefer to use a big gun, since it gives a much stronger sense of power. Likely, the hypothetical kid would also be physically weak and would probably get beaten up if attempting to attack by hammer. That is why all guns need to be banned, especially in the US. There is no need to hunt anyway, there's already food in the store. And people who target-practise as a hobby can go join the military instead if they are so into shooting. I think this is a small price to pay for preventing further shootings. Ban all guns. Play with soft air-guns or somethng instead.

My grandfather must have been one of those "malcontents, misfits, sociopaths, and so forth" that Old Europe exported to the New World. A generation later, one of his sons was among the Allied troops liberating the European death camps that some "cowboy" wallpainter (and his scores of millions of supporters, collaborators, and enablers) set up to deal with other "malcontents, misfits, sociopaths, and so forth" that apparently couldn't be exported to North America.

Is it possible that you didn't send quite all of them over to us? Just wondering...

Just curious, but what evidence of mental illness has anyone put forth regarding the shooter? Second- and third-hand comments such as "he was weird" and "he was withdrawn"? I'm not sure that this is solid enough evidence to support these rampant claims of mental illness.

Even the notion that a possible Autism Spectrum Disorder (which is not a mental illness) would have contributed to this massacre is a complete fallacy. People with ASD are statistically no more likely to commit a violent act than the general population.

Was he mentally ill? Possibly, but we have no real evidence yet, do we?

But do people seem to be rallying around the issue of mental illness in an effort to divert attention to the fact that kids in America have no problem grabbing military weapons and killing whoever they see fit? They sure do.

Could you explain to me why a household with children in it needs the following type of weapon. Can you do it without saying "Second Amendment" or "It's my God-given right"?



Maybe instead of defending your right to arm yourselves against your neighbors, you should be working to live in peace with them. Feel free to fight and argue with them, but try to cut down on the killing just a bit.

Just a thought: maybe we all should play some Brahms and chill out.

Wait a second. So you can join the Marines or buy a gun at 18, before you can legally even have a drink?

....

Was he mentally ill? Well he did murder several children for no reason then kill himself. What other sorts of explanations could explain that type of behaviour.

A lot of politicians talk of 'evil' when this sort of thing happens. Using evil as an adjective to describe these actions is one thing, but to suggest that 'evil' the noun is part of the cause is really just avoiding having to try and explain properly what leads to this sort of thing happening. Of course we don't need to ban guns, we just need to fight evil.

Australia was a penal colony so their white settlers started from a population with a high proportion of convicts. They have still managed to deal with their gun problem better than we have.

I think that's a big jump in logic you're taking there. Just because something is unbelievable by our standards doesn't put it in the category of "those insane people with mental illness".

And when the gun amnesty was announced following the Port Arthur massacre, there was a vocal minority crying about how terrible it was going to be and what it would mean for our nation and its peoples right to defend themselves, but the reality was no big deal. Hunters can still have rifles, they just can't have semi- or fully automatic weapons anymore. It literally harmed no-one to bring in these measures. It got a lot of guns off the street (especially the ludicrously overpowered and rapid firing variety) and made it a highly punishable offence to possess unlicensed firearms. No it doesn't rule out the occasional act of madness, but it has most certainly decreased to incidence of gun related crime and mass-shootings in our country. It's time all citizens of the world stopped linking their identity with the weapons they have and antiquated amendments on the constitution. Life will go on without these damn weapons, fewer innocent people will die. That's a fact.

<rolls eyes>

The theory isn't that ALL malcontents, etc, migrate, nor is it that ALL immigrants are malcontents, etc., but that there may be a higher proportion of that type in the US population than in most other countries, for the reasons given, and that it influences the culture.

Possible, but one could also argue that it is the existing culture that influences the malcontents. As the vast majority of acts of mass violence committed on US soil are done by white males, I would be hesitant to suggest the immigration of malcontents/mentally ill/crazies as a causal factor.

<Roll> whatever you want.

The assertion that " ...the cultural DNA of the US (and, who knows, maybe the real DNA) has an unusually prominent strain of social paranoia that takes many forms," reflects continuing, wilful blindness to evidence of "social paranoia" in many other other places. I cited some history.

Maybe the "social paranoia" that led to Europe's quest for a "Final Solution" is easily forgettable for you. For me, it suggests that there's a lot of social paranoia in a lot of places.

Or as stated elsewhere, "Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"