The shootings and the campaign
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Author Topic: The shootings and the campaign  (Read 4312 times)
Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]
tsionebreicruoc
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« on: December 13, 2007, 11:11:34 AM »

3 shootings in a week recently, 1 in Nebraska, 2 in Colorado against evangelicals, each time, these sorts of shooting make the headlines of French TV news.

Did it create movements of population who want to take measures to prevent it?

What impact have and could have in the future these shootings and their consequence in the population on the presidency campaign?

Does it play in favor of the conservatives like Romney and Huckabee or more in favor of the ones like Clinton, Giuliani and Obama?
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Alcon
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« Reply #1 on: December 13, 2007, 12:41:02 PM »

Unless a gun control debate erupts over it (which hasn't happened yet, so it probably won't) this isn't the sort of thing that affects a presidential race.
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Verily
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« Reply #2 on: December 13, 2007, 12:42:30 PM »

Unless a gun control debate erupts over it (which hasn't happened yet, so it probably won't) this isn't the sort of thing that affects a presidential race.

It did affect 2000, though. Gore's pro-gun control stance helped him immensely in the suburbs, and that was mostly a result of Columbine.
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Aizen
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« Reply #3 on: December 13, 2007, 12:48:17 PM »

Really, gun control ought to be debated more...espeically in Colorado considering half the shootings that take place seem to happen in Colorado.
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Alcon
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« Reply #4 on: December 13, 2007, 12:51:10 PM »
« Edited: December 13, 2007, 12:57:41 PM by Alcon »

Unless a gun control debate erupts over it (which hasn't happened yet, so it probably won't) this isn't the sort of thing that affects a presidential race.

It did affect 2000, though. Gore's pro-gun control stance helped him immensely in the suburbs, and that was mostly a result of Columbine.

Gun control certainly did affect the race in 2000.  It also screwed him over in a lot of areas - there were a lot of rural areas out West where Clinton did well, Gore did awfully, and then Bush's standing fell between 2000 and 2004.

It's an ever-present "cultural" issue, but I don't see these shootings having anywhere near the effect of a Columbine.

Then again, I was 10 in 2000, so I should probably stfu.
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12th Doctor
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« Reply #5 on: December 13, 2007, 12:51:23 PM »

Unless a gun control debate erupts over it (which hasn't happened yet, so it probably won't) this isn't the sort of thing that affects a presidential race.

It did affect 2000, though. Gore's pro-gun control stance helped him immensely in the suburbs, and that was mostly a result of Columbine.

Sadly, people have grown used to it since then.
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Padfoot
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« Reply #6 on: December 13, 2007, 09:16:41 PM »

Unless the candidates are forced to make a statement (or foolishly choose to make one on their own volition), I doubt it will be an issue.  It's also possible that these shootings could come up as part of a debate on homeland security.
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Stranger in a strange land
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« Reply #7 on: December 13, 2007, 10:31:11 PM »

gun control is a dead issue, and I expect it to have no effect on the 2008 election.
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Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]
tsionebreicruoc
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« Reply #8 on: December 14, 2007, 12:10:03 PM »

Was Columbine the first of these shootings in USA? I mean a teenager with big guns who choose a place to shoot a maximum of peoples in it.

Do these shootings become "normal" in USA...?!?
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Verily
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« Reply #9 on: December 14, 2007, 12:17:29 PM »

Was Columbine the first of these shootings in USA? I mean a teenager with big guns who choose a place to shoot a maximum of peoples in it.

Do these shootings become "normal" in USA...?!?

Columbine was the worst, and still is. School shootings have risen since then, but I think a lot of the rise actually has come as a result of Columbine. Most of the current perpetrators are Columbine copy-cats who have decided it's a great way to go out with a bang. (These days, anyway, students may be too young to remember Columbine, but they have other copy-cats to copy.)
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Fmr President & Senator Polnut
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« Reply #10 on: December 14, 2007, 10:11:45 PM »

Yes for some reason (to paraphrase Michael Douglas in the American President) - people do not relate guns to gun related crime.

We had the single biggest massacre by an individual in Tasmania, 35 people. The PM went hard on guns, and created some of the most rigid set of gun laws in the world. It was one of the few things I give John Howard a lot of credit for.
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Politico
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« Reply #11 on: December 14, 2007, 11:11:39 PM »
« Edited: December 14, 2007, 11:37:54 PM by Politico »

Statistics show that if you have a pool, a firearm and one or more children on your property, your children are far more likely to drown in the pool than be killed by your firearm. As a result of this, should we outlaw pools? Or should we just heavily regulate pools? Should we constantly tell parents how to parent and what they can see, hear, read, own, and do in the privacy of their own homes? OR maybe, AND THIS IS A STARTLING MAYBE for some folks, we should instead have a government that allows law-abiding citizens to do as they please in the privacy of their own homes so long as they do not unlawfully harm others? A nation cannot prosper if its citizens are crippled by a Big Brother-style of government. People need to be free to make choices and take responsibility for their actions. Should they screw up, they need to face the consequences them self. The government should not function like a big brother, supposedly looking out for citizens with huge bureaucracies and a long list of laws and regulations. That is not how a nation and its people progress and prosper to the greatest degree possible.

Just like prohibition did not end the sale and consumption of alcohol, "gun control" at the national level would not solve the problems of gun proliferation and the misuse of firearms.  Just look at neighboring Canada, for example. Their "gun control" has produced nothing more than further government bureaucracy and, as an extension, fewer tax dollars for truly essential national endeavors such as education, infrastructure, defense spending and scientific/technological research. The misuse of firearms has not gone down, they also have problems with gun crimes on their streets and in their schools, so why did they waste billions of dollars on "gun control"? It produced nothing except further government bureaucracy. I strongly doubt America, a nation with a population ten times larger than Canada's, would be able to produce a different result.

When it all comes down to it, a gun is a tool that has been used for numerous purposes the past few centuries. All law-abiding citizens ought to have the right to defend themselves as they see fit. If they choose to defend them self with a firearm, and they properly maintain and care for their firearm, I do not think any government has the right to say, "No, that is not permissible." That is a step away from freedom and towards totalitarianism. That is not where we want to head in the 21st Century.

Just because an incredibly tiny minority of a select few decide to misuse a tool for evil, criminal purposes, the government should pass a law that prohibits all law-abiding citizens from owning and using that same tool for defensive purposes? That is a slippery slope that would be a huge step towards 1984. Such measures are anti-freedom and, as such, I reject them vehemently.
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Fmr President & Senator Polnut
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« Reply #12 on: December 14, 2007, 11:22:51 PM »

For a person with your views, and a person with mine - there is no half-way.

Agree to disagree.
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dead0man
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« Reply #13 on: December 15, 2007, 12:29:18 AM »

Was Columbine the first of these shootings in USA? I mean a teenager with big guns who choose a place to shoot a maximum of peoples in it.

Do these shootings become "normal" in USA...?!?
Not as "normal" as a car fire in Paris that's for sure. Wink
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Gabu
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« Reply #14 on: December 15, 2007, 01:03:54 AM »

Was Columbine the first of these shootings in USA? I mean a teenager with big guns who choose a place to shoot a maximum of peoples in it.

Do these shootings become "normal" in USA...?!?

Columbine was the worst, and still is.

No, that actually isn't true.  More people died in the Virginia Tech shootings than in the Columbine shootings.
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Stranger in a strange land
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« Reply #15 on: December 15, 2007, 01:18:46 AM »

Was Columbine the first of these shootings in USA? I mean a teenager with big guns who choose a place to shoot a maximum of peoples in it.

Do these shootings become "normal" in USA...?!?

Columbine wasn't the first, but it was the most-publicized up to that point.

I wouldn't say mass-shootings are "normal" in that it's unlikely that you or even anyone you know will ever be personally affected by one, but they do happen here more often than in other countries.
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Verily
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« Reply #16 on: December 15, 2007, 01:29:51 AM »

Was Columbine the first of these shootings in USA? I mean a teenager with big guns who choose a place to shoot a maximum of peoples in it.

Do these shootings become "normal" in USA...?!?

Columbine was the worst, and still is.

No, that actually isn't true.  More people died in the Virginia Tech shootings than in the Columbine shootings.

I was thinking about high schools specifically, but, yes, Virginia Tech was worse.

(Although the Bath School disaster, which didn't involve guns, trumped both.)
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Bunwahaha [still dunno why, but well, so be it]
tsionebreicruoc
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« Reply #17 on: December 15, 2007, 11:59:41 AM »

Was Columbine the first of these shootings in USA? I mean a teenager with big guns who choose a place to shoot a maximum of peoples in it.

Do these shootings become "normal" in USA...?!?

Columbine was the worst, and still is.

No, that actually isn't true.  More people died in the Virginia Tech shootings than in the Columbine shootings.

I was thinking about high schools specifically, but, yes, Virginia Tech was worse.

(Although the Bath School disaster, which didn't involve guns, trumped both.)

I don't know if a competition between shootings is a good idea and I don't know if the victim's families do a classification.

Then it's interesting to know what has happened and when. Thank you for "Bath School disaster", I had never heard about it.

Was Columbine the first of these shootings in USA? I mean a teenager with big guns who choose a place to shoot a maximum of peoples in it.

Do these shootings become "normal" in USA...?!?

Columbine wasn't the first, but it was the most-publicized up to that point.

I wouldn't say mass-shootings are "normal" in that it's unlikely that you or even anyone you know will ever be personally affected by one, but they do happen here more often than in other countries.

Yes, I know these shootings are some exceptions in stable countries but what I asked it is if peoples, when they hear about shootings and see it on TV news, are not really surprised and say something like "one more shooting", as we could have said a few months ago "one more bomb attempt in Irak", if you know what I mean.

My question was: are peoples in USA less and less shocked about these sorts of shooting?

Was Columbine the first of these shootings in USA? I mean a teenager with big guns who choose a place to shoot a maximum of peoples in it.

Do these shootings become "normal" in USA...?!?
Not as "normal" as a car fire in Paris that's for sure. Wink

OK, I must answer, even if that's not really the subject.

In France, when we had our riots in November 2005, we also was looking how do the foreign press spoke about it, especially foreign TVs. And you have to know that we were very surprised that a lot of them shew a France "on civil war", that was not. Some TVs in Russia (and maybe FOX news if my memory is good) spoke about some Muslim attacks (CNN has also produced cards of France where French cities were mixed and they put some of them in Swiss and Germany).

Clearly it was hot in maximum 2/3 of poor suburbs in France and very hot in big maximum 1/4 of them. And it was just some burnings, spectacular, very destructive, but not hurting. Even if recently in a small riot in November, some policemen have been shot by rioters but not killed. So it was big, spectacular, but it was the first time and just concerning the territories where live about maximum 10% of French population. There are here or there small riots but they are exceptionnal. Maybe you or others were aware about these things but I think it's good to remind them.

So yes, I think you're right when you say that these sorts of shooting are as normal as a car burning in Paris but you should have say as poor suburbs riots in France. Because first, there are regularly a few cars which burn here or there in French poor suburbs (I think this might happen in every poor suburbs all around the world, poor or rich countries), and then it is not in Paris, but surround Paris, its poor suburbs, in Paris there are quite only very rich people, more and more.

Statistics show that if you have a pool, a firearm and one or more children on your property, your children are far more likely to drown in the pool than be killed by your firearm. As a result of this, should we outlaw pools? Or should we just heavily regulate pools? Should we constantly tell parents how to parent and what they can see, hear, read, own, and do in the privacy of their own homes? OR maybe, AND THIS IS A STARTLING MAYBE for some folks, we should instead have a government that allows law-abiding citizens to do as they please in the privacy of their own homes so long as they do not unlawfully harm others? A nation cannot prosper if its citizens are crippled by a Big Brother-style of government. People need to be free to make choices and take responsibility for their actions. Should they screw up, they need to face the consequences them self. The government should not function like a big brother, supposedly looking out for citizens with huge bureaucracies and a long list of laws and regulations. That is not how a nation and its people progress and prosper to the greatest degree possible.

Just like prohibition did not end the sale and consumption of alcohol, "gun control" at the national level would not solve the problems of gun proliferation and the misuse of firearms.  Just look at neighboring Canada, for example. Their "gun control" has produced nothing more than further government bureaucracy and, as an extension, fewer tax dollars for truly essential national endeavors such as education, infrastructure, defense spending and scientific/technological research. The misuse of firearms has not gone down, they also have problems with gun crimes on their streets and in their schools, so why did they waste billions of dollars on "gun control"? It produced nothing except further government bureaucracy. I strongly doubt America, a nation with a population ten times larger than Canada's, would be able to produce a different result.

When it all comes down to it, a gun is a tool that has been used for numerous purposes the past few centuries. All law-abiding citizens ought to have the right to defend themselves as they see fit. If they choose to defend them self with a firearm, and they properly maintain and care for their firearm, I do not think any government has the right to say, "No, that is not permissible." That is a step away from freedom and towards totalitarianism. That is not where we want to head in the 21st Century.

Just because an incredibly tiny minority of a select few decide to misuse a tool for evil, criminal purposes, the government should pass a law that prohibits all law-abiding citizens from owning and using that same tool for defensive purposes? That is a slippery slope that would be a huge step towards 1984. Such measures are anti-freedom and, as such, I reject them vehemently.

Politico, maybe I will say that because I'm French and so my culture is different of the American culture (even if French culture and all other cultures are less and less different of the American culture, it's absolutely not a reproach, it's a report), but in France, we consider it is the role of the Police to protect peoples and so "gun control" is big. It's not a problem for liberties and criminality with guns is fair.

Then, you spoke about Canada. I don't know for whole Canada, but I know for Quebec (French-speaking party of Canada). The biggest problem in Quebec with guns, it is... USA. Montreal, biggest city of Quebec, 2nd city of Canada with 3 millions of peoples, which has also criminality problems is at 70 km of US border (about 35 miles) and all the ones who want guns pass the border and can buy totally legally a gun sold on the other side without being controlled by US or Canadian duties when they return in their country. That's a big problem for the Police in Quebec and especially in Montreal. So in this case, maybe it is not "gun control" which is bad but it is a badly done "gun control".

To finish, we can't say gun is a tool, like a pool or even like a knife. With a pool maybe a child can fall in, maybe two. With a knife, you can go in a mall or a school or else and kill one people or two, but quickly, peoples will jump on you and they will stop you, maximum you can take an hostage. With a gun, and especially with some sorts of which are allowed in USA but even with a normal one, you can quickly and easily kill several peoples without being stopped and it is more hard to stop you. A gun is not a tool, it's a very dangerous tool and I think it's good to adapt laws with it.
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ukchris82
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« Reply #18 on: December 16, 2007, 03:45:12 PM »



About the swimming pool/gun arguement:

Drowning in a swimming pool is an accident, being shot is purposeful...
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TomC
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« Reply #19 on: December 16, 2007, 08:09:18 PM »



About the swimming pool/gun arguement:

Drowning in a swimming pool is an accident, being shot is purposeful...

Plenty of shooting are accidental, and gun control advocates often use those figures to argue against guns or for gun regulations.
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Bacon King
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« Reply #20 on: December 16, 2007, 08:15:37 PM »

Statistics show that if you have a pool, a firearm and one or more children on your property, your children are far more likely to drown in the pool than be killed by your firearm. As a result of this, should we outlaw pools? Or should we just heavily regulate pools?

This analogy falls apart when you consider that pools aren't specifically designed to kill people. Not that I disagree with you; I'm against excessive gun control. I'm just saying.
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Fmr President & Senator Polnut
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« Reply #21 on: December 16, 2007, 08:38:40 PM »



About the swimming pool/gun arguement:

Drowning in a swimming pool is an accident, being shot is purposeful...

I think it's more the point that a pool's key use is to be swum in. A gun has no other purpose than to kill, maim or scare.
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Politico
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« Reply #22 on: December 16, 2007, 09:18:36 PM »
« Edited: December 16, 2007, 09:43:37 PM by Politico »

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What happens if you intentionally throw a plugged-in TV into a swimming pool while somebody you would like to murder is submerged in the water?

Unfortunately, we live in the real world. In the real world, if somebody really wants to kill somebody they're going to find a way. They do not necessarily need a gun to get the job done. And even if they did need the gun, all of the "gun control" in the world is not necessarily going to prevent them from obtaining one.

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The vast majority of people in this country who possess firearms do not use their firearms to unlawfully harm or kill other human beings. They do not use them for any unlawful purposes. The vast majority of gun owners in this country have their weapons for defensive purposes and/or animal hunting purposes. Only the tiniest minority of firearm owners use their firearms for unlawful purposes just like only the tiniest minority of owners of pools use their pools for unlawful purposes.

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And you would like to completely cede control of such a tool to the government rather than allow law-abiding individuals to make an individual choice whether or not to own and use such a tool? Go read up on what that idea ended up producing in Germany in the early half of the 20th Century.

I strongly agree with the "liberal" viewpoint on the vast majority of issues, and consider myself a staunch Democrat, but you'll never convince me that allowing the federal government to control and regulate the ownership of firearms is a good idea. I strongly believe that law-abiding citizens ought to be able to choose for them self whether or not to protect themselves with a firearm.
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Politico
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« Reply #23 on: December 16, 2007, 09:25:17 PM »



About the swimming pool/gun arguement:

Drowning in a swimming pool is an accident, being shot is purposeful...

Plenty of shooting are accidental, and gun control advocates often use those figures to argue against guns or for gun regulations.

Thank you for clearly stating the obvious reason for the original analogy.
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Fmr President & Senator Polnut
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« Reply #24 on: December 16, 2007, 09:27:57 PM »

I'm not trying to convince you, since I know I can't.

It's just growing up in a different environment. The idea of owning a gun, let alone owning one in an urban area is just utterly ridiculous to me.
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