Mass Shooting at Colo. Movie Theater, 14 People Dead

[Rich_Olszewski]

Not what I’ve read:

Conditions for getting a Carrying Permit There are three conditions:

stating plausibly the need to carry firearms to protect oneself, other people, or real property from a specified danger

Ay, there’s the rub. What is the plausible need to protect against a specified danger? Easy to determine if the permit is issued to men working in occupations such as security. Not sure that it would be issued if a Swiss simply wanted to carry one in downtown Zurich to protect against an unspecified danger.

 

[wynnejj]

Norway has some of the strickest gun laws in the “free” world. They are also home to the largest mass shooting in history.

articles.cnn.com/2012-04-19/tech/tech_gaming-gadgets_games-violence-norway-react_1_video-games-online-game-shooting-spree?_s=PM:TECH

Interesting article which points out the fact that there may be a strong link with the type of entertainment breeding violence. In this case, the spree killer was into violent video games. In our case, James Holmes modelled himself after the Joker. His elaborate booby trap setting … some entertainment value in putting together?! Maybe we don’t need gun control, but rather entertainment control. That’s what the article is about, it seems.

 

[Scott_Lafrance]

Most people think of the Cesar Romero version of the 1960’s TV series Batman. In this version, he was more of a goofy prankster, rather than the committedly insane Joker played by either Jack Nickleson or Heath Ledger.

 

[Rich_Olszewski]

Most people think of the Cesar Romero version of the 1960’s TV series Batman. In this version, he was more of a goofy prankster, rather than the committedly insane Joker played by either Jack Nickleson or Heath Ledger.

Certainly. TV and the movies used to sanitize everything.

 

[wynnejj]

The superhero movies of today often try to portray the events of past comics as technically feasible in the real world. The Batman Begins movie is a good example. You read a comic book, and you walk away with the feeling that the story is technically impossible. You watch Batman Begins and you get the feeling that if one was trained like a gymnast, trained in martial arts, and had access to military armaments, much of it could be done in real life. If you watch a Wiley Coyote cartoon, you say that’s crazy. You watch a Jackie Chan movie, and all of a sudden crazy stunts, such as rolling off a mountain top in a big balloon ball, come into the realm of possibility.

 

[curlycool89]

Norway has some of the strickest gun laws in the “free” world. They are also home to the largest mass shooting in history.

articles.cnn.com/2012-04-19/tech/tech_gaming-gadgets_games-violence-norway-react_1_video-games-online-game-shooting-spree?_s=PM:TECH

A single shooting. Not a pattern that is repeated nearly every year.

1 shooting in how many years Norway has been country. How many has the US had in the past 10 years?

Still, it drives home the point, “An armed society is a polite society.”

I don’t know if anyone would call Switzerland a “polite” society. Secretive yes, a good place to stash your off-shore money yes.

Simplistic.

Swiss males who have completed their military training are required to keep their army-issued weapons - a rifle for EMs and a 9mm pistol for officers. These are to be kept at home.

To carry firearms in public or outdoors, those individuals must have a permit - which in most cases are issued only to private citizens working in occupations such as security.

Switzerland is not the model for what American gun lovers would like to see in this country.

I’m cool with that model. Just keep the guns at home.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

This story brought tears to my eyes. These three young men are true heroes. Selfless, honorable heroes. And its nice to see CNN reporting their sacrifices amidst so much bad news.

us.cnn.com/2012/07/25/opinion/bennett-aurora-three/index.html?c=&page=1

 

[wynnejj]

People who like Batman over Superman or Spiderman like him because he is strictly mortal with great physical skills and great equipment. Many who like Batman like him because he is more akin to a ninja than a person with superhuman powers.

Many who watch Jackie Chan movies can enjoy and recognize what is real and what is not just fine. For example, one knows that a choreographed fight sequence is unrealistic in real life, but that the stunts done in the choreographed fight sequence were actually realistically performed. One can also tell that everything in the movie actually really happened as filmed, but based on the numerous outtakes at the end of the movie, it did not happen effortlessly. These were not Super Dave Osborne stunts, but real stunts modelled after Buster Keaton comedy.

What captured me about the Heath Ledger portrayal of the Joker is that he did not really have a lot of “toys” at his disposal, as opposed to Nicholson’s portrayal of the Joker in the “Batman” movie. Anyone could flip his burger as a Ronald MacDonald employee and become the Joker terrorist with easy access to today’s weaponry. The fact is that role playing the Heath Ledger’s Joker was realistically and relatively effortlessly do-able.

 

[Allegra]

Absolutely, true heros!

 

[wynnejj]

Men have an instinct to protect & serve the vulnerable. It is not chivalry, but something deeply in-grained and instinctive. Men (and women) also revile men who neglect to protect when it is a duty that can be performed without physical harm. That is why there is such instinctive emphatic disapproval by the public in cases of the cover-up of molestation of women & children. Unfortunately, this instinct to protect in men and to punish those who cowardly avoid that duty does not seem to apply to the unseen vulnerable persons. Else, the mass murder of the innocents would cause the manly instinct to protect & serve the vulnerable to kick in, and public opinion would be revolted by manhood that neglects this duty.

 

[SamH]

A single shooting. Not a pattern that is repeated nearly every year.

1 shooting in how many years Norway has been country. How many has the US had in the past 10 years?

That one shooting pretty much covers all the ones that happened in the US in the 30 years. On a per capita basis it probably covers a couple hundred years. Norway has the population of Missouri.

 

[SamH]

Simplistic.

Swiss males who have completed their military training are required to keep their army-issued weapons - a rifle for EMs and a 9mm pistol for officers. These are to be kept at home.

To carry firearms in public or outdoors, those individuals must have a permit - which in most cases are issued only to private citizens working in occupations such as security.

Switzerland is not the model for what American gun lovers would like to see in this country.

So you agree that guns are not the root of the problem?

 

[curlycool89]

What captured me about the Heath Ledger portrayal of the Joker is that he did not really have a lot of “toys” at his disposal, as opposed to Nicholson’s portrayal of the Joker in the “Batman” movie. Anyone could flip his burger as a Ronald MacDonald employee and become the Joker terrorist with easy access to today’s weaponry. The fact is that role playing the Heath Ledger’s Joker was realistically and relatively **effortlessly **do-able.

Effortlessly? No, I wouldn’t say that at all.

Ledger’s Joker was a master manipulator. His end goal wasn’t to kill a bunch of people; his goal was for everyone to be just like him. That was his ultimate revenge against Harvey Dent, that Dent because a psychopathic Two-Face.

And remember the ploy with the boats? Again, he could have just blown them up, but what he really wanted was for them to blow each other up, so that he could show that we’re all crazy axe-murders if given the right circumstances. The convicts (who threw the detonator out the window) were in contrast to this, to show that people are in fact fundamentally good (and can be redeemed) and can choose to be altruistic even if it may cause harm to self.

That one shooting pretty much covers all the ones that happened in the US in the 30 years. On a per capita basis it probably covers a couple hundred years. Norway has the population of Missouri.

If I may totally pessimistic for a second, at least the gunman in Norway had an MO (a reason to actually do it). An absolutely crazy insane MO that is morally reprehensible, but at the very least he had something more then the Freudian excuse that most gunman in the US seem to have (they were bullied, they didn’t fit in, daddy didn’t love them as a child, whatever).

In Norway, it was a mentally (mostly) stable person, while in the US it seems to be a string of largely emotionally unstable people who use guns to vent their anger at the first instance of trouble. I think the rest of the world would have a lot less issues with your guns if your citizenry proved to be a more emotionally-stable people. And once again, that goes back to the issues of trust and paranoia. If you weren’t so paranoid, the rest of us wouldn’t be so paranoid about your guns.

 

[wynnejj]

Effortlessly? No, I wouldn’t say that at all.

Ledger’s Joker was a master manipulator. His end goal wasn’t to kill a bunch of people; his goal was for everyone to be just like him. That was his ultimate revenge against Harvey Dent, that Dent because a psychopathic Two-Face.

And remember the ploy with the boats? Again, he could have just blown them up, but what he really wanted was for them to blow each other up, so that he could show that we’re all crazy axe-murders if given the right circumstances. The convicts (who threw the detonator out the window) were in contrast to this, to show that people are in fact fundamentally good (and can be redeemed) and can choose to be altruistic even if it may cause harm to self.

True. The Joker, though not superhuman, sure seemed to be guided by a malevolent supernatural force.

If I may totally pessimistic for a second, at least the gunman in Norway had an MO (a reason to actually do it). An absolutely crazy insane MO that is morally reprehensible, but at the very least he had something more then the Freudian excuse that most gunman in the US seem to have (they were bullied, they didn’t fit in, daddy didn’t love them as a child, whatever).

In Norway, it was a mentally (mostly) stable person, while in the US it seems to be a string of largely emotionally unstable people who use guns to vent their anger at the first instance of trouble. I think the rest of the world would have a lot less issues with your guns if your citizenry proved to be a more emotionally-stable people. And once again, that goes back to the issues of trust and paranoia. If you weren’t so paranoid, the rest of us wouldn’t be so paranoid about your guns.

I get the impression that James Holmes would fit the category of a mentally (mostly) stable person based on the accounts of people who knew him. Sorry to hear about your paranoia. If you go to the Center for Disease Control and look up the online 10 leading causes of death by age group, you will find that homicide and suicide seem to be leading causes in almost a one for one proportion, especially for year 15 thru 35. From this, I suspect that the root causes for both homicide & suicide are based on low levels of happiness. (“Happiness is a warm gun. Bang, bang, shoot, shoot.” - Beatles).

 

[curlycool89]

Sorry to hear about your paranoia.

I was being hyperbolic.

Everyone here is angry that the rest of the world likes to tell America what to do with their guns. All I meant was that the rest of the world wouldn’t care so much if Americans weren’t so paranoid about “possible future tyrannical governments that probably won’t happen”, especially in the 21st century.

 

[rlg94086]

Interesting… cdnshootingsports.org/tenmyths.html

Current research indicates that restrictive Canadian firearm legislation has had no perceptible impact on violent crime since its introduction in 1977. Despite more �gun controls,� the violent crime rate in Canada has grown faster than the United States. It increased by 70% between 1977 and 1996; twice as high as all other Criminal Code offences combined. The breakdown in �social controls� is believed to have more influence on violent crime than the presence, or absence, of firearm laws.

 

[curlycool89]

Interesting… cdnshootingsports.org/tenmyths.html

And that seems like it would be a very unbiased website.

Their so-called “study” has no credible names attached to it (like a professor of criminology or even statistics), and they provide no data to back up their claims. They make claims about what people say using exact percentages without any justification where they got those numbers from (they could have pulled them out of thin air for all we know).

This is a paper that would have gotten an F in a 1st year university class. I wouldn’t even call that a study at all; it proves absolutely nothing. Your papers are only as good as the data that backs them up, that’s real science.

Show us a real study done by a professor in criminology from a major Canadian University, not some advocacy group PR propaganda.

 

[rlg94086]

And that seems like it would be a very unbiased website.

Their so-called “study” has no credible names attached to it (like a professor of criminology or even statistics), and they provide no data to back up their claims. They make claims about what people say using exact percentages without any justification where they got those numbers from (they could have pulled them out of thin air for all we know).

This is a paper that would have gotten an F in a 1st year university class. I wouldn’t even call that a study at all; it proves absolutely nothing. Your papers are only as good as the data that backs them up, that’s real science.

Show us a real study done by a professor in criminology from a major Canadian University, not some advocacy group PR propaganda.

Uh huh…nice rant.

 

[wynnejj]

Uh huh…nice rant.

Another interesting article, with all kinds of ibid(s):
CANADIAN GUN CONTROL: SHOULD THE UNITED STATES LOOK NORTH FOR A SOLUTION TO ITS FIREARMS PROBLEM?

Canadian gun control works in Canada. True, the comprehensive system of controls enacted in 1977 has yielded little demonstrable evidence of success; and the studies purporting to show positive results from the 1977 law are generally of dubious competence.[334] But for most Canadians, that is simply not the point. Gun control, the exaltation of the police, deference to authority, and rejection of violence, are all threads in the tapestry of Canadian culture.

The system of gun control in Canada works because it affirms, symbolically, the deeply held values of orderliness and non-violence. Thus, before attempting to transplant the Canadian system to America, it is important to consider whether the Canadian system can accommodate traditional American values as adequately as it accommodates Canadian ones. Since there is little empirical evidence to demonstrate that Canadian gun control laws actually reduce crime, the law’s greatest benefit appears to be symbolic. It is difficult to determine whether, and to what extent, American values and culture can yield to embrace the characteristic benefits derived from Canadian-style gun control.

 

[rlg94086]

Another interesting article, with all kinds of ibid(s):
CANADIAN GUN CONTROL: SHOULD THE UNITED STATES LOOK NORTH FOR A SOLUTION TO ITS FIREARMS PROBLEM?

Thanks. I’ll read it in detail later, but I fast forwarded to the conclusion:

“The system of gun control in Canada works because it affirms, symbolically, the deeply held values of orderliness and non-violence. Thus, before attempting to transplant the Canadian system to America, it is important to consider whether the Canadian system can accommodate traditional American values as adequately as it accommodates Canadian ones. Since there is little empirical evidence to demonstrate that Canadian gun control laws actually reduce crime, the law’s greatest benefit appears to be symbolic. It is difficult to determine whether, and to what extent, American values and culture can yield to embrace the characteristic benefits derived from Canadian-style gun control.”

So, their gun control laws work for them…despite any empirical evidence to demonstrate that.