<p>I don’t doubt that there are “some.” I was referring to a poster here who insisted that coming to Texas was virtually taking your life in your own hands because of all of the short tempered Bubbas running around with guns menacingly displayed in the cab window.</p>
<p>I travel frequently to rural areas in west Texas, and in these areas where I would expect to see what you described (areas with the feral hogs, coyotes and such), I haven’t seen even one in several years. My point isn’t that it is unheard of, just that the stereotype is so completely wrong. But it seems we agree on that.</p>
<p>it really isn’t, and that is one of the big issues, I think, with gun laws in the US. There are large urbanized areas where there is nothing to hunt but people. There are large swaths of land where there are very few people, but they hunt.</p>
<p>I would not want to run into a grizzly unless my guide had an automatic weapon. </p>
<p>We are trying to make laws for people who don’t need the laws and where we have the laws, they don’t even work. But, would you ask someone who lived in Africa to give up their automatic weapons? No. There really are places in this country where you are faced with some serious predators: 1. in urban centers, it’s people with guns. 2. out west, it’s animals. </p>
<p>I don’t know how you can make laws that suit the needs of both. This is why we need to go back to making more of our laws at a state level and less at a federal level. We live in different places.</p>
<p>^^^We have a local commentator who says the person going on rampage should never be identified in news so that future acts are curbed. They are all looking to be immortalized by the news cycle.</p>
<p>Yep. I refer to none of them by name and it drives me crazy when they do so on the news. I actually noticed with the connecticut shooter that there were reporters who were refusing to use names and then some people kept using the names and I could see in the eyes of the ones not using it that there was frustration with those who continued to do so.</p>
<p>They should never be named. They lost the right to a name.</p>
<p>Agree that they should never be named, but that hasn’t caught on.</p>
<p>My “point” is that people kill and use what they use to do it, including using things any particular citizen might not want banned/highly regulated, including perhaps hunting rifles a la the UT Tower. That is what we are discussing.</p>
<p>The largest mass murder related to schools in the US was by incendiary explosives at a grade school in Bath Township (40+ dead, 50+ injured) in the 1920s. The stuff was widely used by famers for stump removal. </p>
<p>Non school–The Happy Land mass killing (80+ as I recall) was by arson. Matches and gasoline. Ban gasoline?</p>
<p>Oklahoma City was a bomb using fertilizer.</p>
<p>California?? The Manson crew used stabbing on several victims. Ban anything with a sharp edge?</p>
<p>The list of the 15 largest killings at the kindergarden, school and university levels include ones in Finland, Germany, China (knives and machetes, as I recall), Canada, Brazil, Azorbaijan as well as the US and elsewhere. Is not exactly exclusive to the US.</p>
<p>If each of us ruled the world, he or she would probably ban what that person places little or no value on. But no one person is the ruler, so we discuss and deal and yes compromise. And no matter what we do now or in the future, people will kill people.</p>
<p>the UK may have a higher burglary rate than the US but we’ve way “ahead” of them in terms of murders with firearms and murders committed by youths, and slightly ahead of them in terms of overall crime.</p>
<p>“Someone asked the comparison of murder rates between Bermuda and the US. According to the Bermuda editorial I cited, using the rate per 100,000 people Bermuda = 12+% and the US =4+%.”</p>
<p>I’ll still take my chances given that 5 murders is out of a the sample size of only 65K in Bermuda and we don’t know the circumstances. Could have been one person taking out his whole family, since there were only 5 in total. </p>
<p>I also don’t think the people in Bermuda have any worries that they will be mowed down by a mad person at a mall, grocery store parking lot, school, or movie theater. I also don’t expect to see, anytime soon, armed guards in all these places because it is too dangerous to not have them there.</p>
<p>07DAD - I grant your point that in the last century deranged persons used many weapons for mass-murder. In the past decade though, guns have been the weapon of choice. And thus guns are a target of opportunity for politicians. Will banning assault rifles and high-capacity cartridges prevent future mass-homicides? Of course not. But the nation has to start somewhere, and measures that actually reduce gun violence will take years to implement.</p>
<p>“We have a local commentator who says the person going on rampage should never be identified in news so that future acts are curbed. They are all looking to be immortalized by the news cycle.”</p>
<p>I think that is a very simplistic explanation and not born out in studies of mass murderers . </p>
<p>“Most mass murderers kill specific people for specific reasons,” said criminologist James Alan Fox of Northeastern University, who with colleague Jack Levin has studied every mass murder in the United States since the early 1980s. “They kill the bosses who fired them, the professors who wronged them. These are revenge killings.”</p>
<p>“Most mass murderers kill specific people for specific reasons,” said criminologist James Alan Fox of Northeastern University, who with colleague Jack Levin has studied every mass murder in the United States since the early 1980s. “They kill the bosses who fired them, the professors who wronged them. These are revenge killings.”"</p>
<p>Sounds like an idiot criminologist. There is only one person to kill if you are killing a boss or professor. The aurora guy was killing someone who wronged them? - who - Hollywood movie watchers?</p>
<p>The connecticut guy was reversing whatever little education his mom may have imparted 6 year olds?</p>
<p>The whole point is that they watch news, pickup the new cycles, and believe their meagre existence in the grand scheme of things will be remembered forever if they do something like this.</p>
<p>^Do you have any proof to back up the claim that mass murderers are motivated by infamy? </p>
<p>Imo, I think people want to believe that is the motivation because it is an easy answer to why someone would commit such an hideous crime - and gives them someone else to blame (the media) for the problem.</p>
<p>Interesting chart. The UK actually has more “crime victims” than the US (UK ranked 3rd, US ranked 15th), which must mean that more reported US crimes are against property rather than people, which is a good thing. So much for people thinking Western Europe is safer!</p>
<p>The chart also omits overall murders reported in the UK; it shows only the number murdered with firearms (US wins handily), and reports them as raw numbers and not as murder rates. That is fishy and does not give us the whole picture.</p>
<p>The definition he provided for stands true for all murders and not for mass. There are people killing each other out of anger but they do kill their own family members or those who think wronged them (very specific). Mass murderers are killing people they dont always interact with but a broad definition of a group - a big blob that fits their own definition - perceived wrong against a population. It works because they are wacko.</p>
<p>I could be wrong but that does not make this so called criminologist right. By the same token, lots of people here seem to believe going out in blazes has some perceived glory in the killer’s mind.</p>
<p>You’ve got a higher chance of becoming the victim of a crime in the UK, but a higher chance of being murdered in the US. Whether the difference is significant or not, I cannot say.</p>
<p>Not reporting a mass murderer’s name is the proverbial locking-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-has-left. Who cares at that point - what, are the [Columbine students / VA Tech Students / NIU students / Aurora movie-goers / Newtown students / oh-there-are-so-many-to-choose–from ] less dead when we don’t know the killers’ names?</p>
<p>How can reasonable gun owners POSSIBLY object to background checks, insurance requirements, caps on assault weapons and the like? To object says that you’re throwing your lot in with the afeard-of-the-gubmint types.</p>
<p>^ Texaspg, so that is your opinion and not backed upped by any studies that prove it. </p>
<p>And just because the shooter is “wacko” does not prove their reasons for killing are to gain infamy. There are a whole host of reasons they do what they do, and imo, gaining infamy likely has little to do with it. </p>
<p>In actually, imo, I think when someone decides to do something like this the last thing they are thinking of is gaining infamy by being all over the news.</p>
<p>Sometimes I wonder if they infamy achieved by mass shooters (whether intended or not) is responsible for the inevitable “copycat murders” which ensue.</p>
<p>It really doesn’t matter if what they’re hoping to do is gain infamy or not. There are zero critical thinking skills evident in this statement: “We shouldn’t put any barriers or restrictions on guns, because we’ve figured out that we can deter would-be mass killers by not publishing their names.” Can you imagine any of our kids turning that in as a college paper? It’s a clear F on critical thinking skills.</p>