[Xist]

On March 23, 2010 [my thirty-first birthday], Zheng Minsheng 41, murdered eight children with a knife in an elementary school in Nanping, Fujian province, China.

He was executed thirty-six days later. Hours later, Chen Kangbing, 33 wounded 16 students and a teacher, also with a knife, at Hongfu Primary School.

On April 29 in Taixing, Jiangsu, 47-year-old Xu Yuyuan went to Zhongxin Kindergarten and stabbed the security guard, 28 students, and two teachers.

On April 30, Wang Yonglai hit preschool children in the head with a hammer in Weifang, Shandong, then burned himself to death with gasoline.

May 12, 2010

May 18, 2010

August 4, 2010

Seven brutal attacks in 134 days. One hammer, the rest were knives, and each had multiple victims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School...China_(2010–12)

Does it compare with American gun violence? Maybe not. Is it really better?

On December 7, the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence released an analysis of recent mortality data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The results included a grim new record for gun violence: 39,773 Americans were killed by guns in 2017, a dramatic increase of more than 1,000 people from the year before. The responses to this report were fraught, with some people pointing to mass shootings as the major culprit, while others were quick to blame “inner-city” violence.

But the murder rates in America’s cities appear to be falling. On Tuesday, the Brennan Center for Justice published an analysis of annual FBI crime data that concluded the murder rate in America’s 30 largest cities dropped 3.1 percent in 2017, and projected a decrease of about 6 percent in 2018. The Brennan Center looks only at data from major cities, but murders in more sparsely populated areas tend to match national trends, says Inimai Chettiar, the director of the Brennan Center’s justice program

Suicides account for 60 percent of the country’s gun deaths.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...icides/578812/

My last landlord was a 6'4" and probably 280 pound teacher. Whenever there was a problem at his school, they didn't call security, they called my landlord, who often wished that he walked into the situation with a gun.

Ankle holsters?

Small gun safe by the teacher's desk?

I don't know.

My sister is rabidly anti-gun and ranted to Mom that when Australia had a mass murder they got rid of their guns.

Not really.

To quote the guy from Knowing Better, in his "The Complete Moderate's Guide to Gun Control:"

Let's clear up what Australia actually has after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.
They enacted sweeping gun control that essentially eliminated mass shootings, but it didn't eliminate all gun violence because there are still guns in Australia. They didn't completely ban them. Here's what they actually did: Completely ban all automatic and military-style weapons, just like we did for machine guns and temporarily for assault weapons, with the addition of having to sell back any currently owned ones; set up a national registry for all firearms restrict interstate purchase; and transfer to licensed dealers just like we do; require secure storage of all firearms and require anyone seeking to own a firearm to obtain a license. Who can get a license? They basically have the same restrictions that we do under the Brady Bill with the additional requirements of being mentally sound. You also have to have a genuine reason for wanting to possess a firearm. Hunting and even target shooting at a gun club count, you just can't have one to hang on your wall, I guess. You also have to demonstrate appropriate training in the safe use of firearms kind of like what we do with driver's licenses. That's it it wasn't a complete ban.
Plenty of people still owned rifles, pistols, and shotguns.

https://youtu.be/vggYGQyVaCo?t=1016

I do think that preventing the media from making bad people famous would help. Is that a first amendment violation? Well, murder is a Right to Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness violation.

I also think that loopholes need to be closed and laws need to be enforced.

I am going to clarify terminology. For some reason, anti-gun people seem to go out of their way to get this stuff wrong. An automatic weapon or machine gun is what I carried in Afghanistan. It weighed seventeen pounds and could empty the two-hundred-round drum that weighed five pounds in about twenty seconds. However, if you don't change the barrel, it will warp, and you will have a bad day.

The easiest way for a civilian to own one is to break a number of laws.

The M4 isn't an assault rifle, it is a carbine, with a shorter barrel, and again, the easiest way for a civilian to own one is to break a number of laws. It weighs seven pounds and, while the manufacturer advertises that it can fire something like 700 rounds per minute, that would require squeezing the trigger 700 times in 60 seconds, and changing the magazine 23 times.

I was in the Army for eight years. Changing the magazine 23 times in 60 seconds would not leave me much time for shooting.

People talk about fully-automatic versions, but I saw zero in eight years in the Army, although they had a three-round burst, but again, the easiest way for a civilian to own one of those is to break laws.

People insist the M16 (and AR15) are the same as M4s. No, the barrel is longer, as required by law. Strangely, it does not really weigh more, because a bit more weight holds up better.



This is way better than one of those evil assault rifles, right? Be sure to write down your answer. It is too late to change!

So less scary and dangerous, right? Wooden stock, no pistol grip, and perfect for keeping you warm on a cold winter night!

This does not fire the same rounds as an M16. Yay? It fires the same rounds as an AK-47.

Is it less deadly because of the appearance of the stock and how you position your hand? Not if you put a thirty-round magazine in it.

That is the last thing. Magazine.

This is a clip:


I do not know of any weapon that uses these. In the Army our Drill Sergeants handed us these, we removed the rounds, and loaded our spring-loaded magazines.

They are not the same.

Why do we need guns when we have the police?!

"The average school shooting lasts 12.5 minutes, while the average police response time is 18 minutes."

You need to stop watching Fox News!

Source: https://www.sheriffs.org/content/emb...-response-time

We need to get rid of magazines that hold more than ten rounds!

There seems to be a disproportional relationship between how much it costs to live somewhere and how safe it is.

Crazy!

How much would it cost for a gun, training, and adequate practice? Would that pay for a move to a nicer neighborhood? The cheapest AR15 I found on the first Google result for AR15 is $428.95. That would pay for the application fee and a U-Haul rental. If you can put together the money for a gun, you cannot necessarily afford to just move somewhere nicer.

So, you are stuck in a bad neighborhood, but still do not need a high-capacity magazine, right?

It only takes one round to kill a bozo--unless you miss, they get lucky, or they are on drugs.

What about two or three bozos? Will you be able to maintain perfect accuracy with moving targets, probably moving at you, while you fear for your life?

I cannot find it now, but I read a post by someone who said he trained more concealed-carry permit holders than anyone else in Utah. He also wrote scifi. He said he personally saw a man on drugs with ten gunshot wounds walk onto an ambulance.

"One can view the Congress' action in 1986 to ban civilian possession of fully automatic weapons as something of a kind of a precedent that would open the door for restricting civilian access to semiautomatic, assault-style weapons," Spitzer says.

Spitzer says a major reason the machine gun ban met so little resistance was a 1934 law passed a month after outlaws Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were killed in a hail of machine gun bullets. It required machine gun owners to pay a hefty tax, be fingerprinted and be listed on a national registry.

As a result, he says, sales of machine guns plummeted.

https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallp...l-on-the-books

How do we reduce suicides?

I don't know.

How do we reduce homicides?

I don't know.

Yes, it seems like people these people always target gun-free zones. If there were armed and trained guards (or at least personnel), would that encourage people with homicidal tendencies to go elsewhere, or just escalate?

I don't know. The financial cost would deter those that could not get their hands on it, but how much would it cost to arm and train one staff member per 100 students?

I am not really a gun advocate. I am an advocate of trying to get along with others, and encouraging your neighbors to do the same, but we cannot mandate that, and I do not believe that we should try.