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[Wolfhunter107]

Don't they? I mean, compare the Boston marathon bombing to that shooting in California last year?

I really don't see why gun control is playing such a big role in this case.

The guy was an Islamic extremist, he was going to kill people by any means necessary. If he didn't have a gun he would have used bombs like the guys in Boston and Brussels or he may have gotten one illegally like in Paris.

Damn right! That's why I never lock my door. Burglars would just get in by another way. /s

Seriously, if you want to argue that the costs of preventing a guy like this shooter to buy weapons is too high, you could, but this argument here is just dumb.

In other news, there was another terrorist attack by an ISIS-inspired lone wolf in France. Luckily, the attacker only had a knife, so the death toll is only two.

And, you know, because he was attacking a house with only 3 people in it. Hardly similar to a guy attacking a crowded bar.

[Sonlirain]

And, you know, because he was attacking a house with only 3 people in it. Hardly similar to a guy attacking a crowded bar.

Not really. If he attacked a bar he'd be mugged after stabbing several people.
Someone would just rise up to the challenge smash his face with a table leg or grab his knife hand and in a crowded place that's basically the end of the attack because other people will just join in and he'd be lucky if it didn't en in a curb stomp.

[LoSboccacc]

I really don't see why gun control is playing such a big role in this case.

Damn right! That's why I never lock my door. Burglars would just get in by another way. /s

Because gun control laws in Europe totally stopped both Hebdo and 2015 attacks in Paris last time around.

[Loud Whispers]

On the thread title's subject matter, compare and contrast Orlando and San Bernardino, in the US, to Leytonstone (bad knife injuries, no death) and Lee Rigby (died at the hands of two attackers, who used a car before the knife attack), in the UK.  Other comparisons exist, but I tried to match factors such as declared motives and targets.

(I don't think anything like total gun control in the US is practical, but I do rather like living in a system where it already takes a lot more effort for lone wolves (or pairs) to accomplish less killing.)

Don't know about Leytonstone, but the Lee Rigby killings was not for a lack of mechanisms, the jihadis who beheaded Lee did so because he was in military uniform and they wanted to kill a soldier. They even had friendly conversations with the infidels around them whilst their hands were covered in blood. Adebolajo and Adebowale had guns on them, which they tried to use on the police, the police won that fight. This is in contrast with say Paris, where their focus is maximizing casualties for maximum impact

Because gun control laws in Europe totally stopped both Hebdo and 2015 attacks in Paris last time around.

To be fair, Europeans knew their jihadis were being grown on their home turf and knew jihadis were coming home to blow them up, and they still kept their borders open. Not much you can blame on gun control when the actual mechanisms for gun control are undermined

[MasterFancyPants]

Don't they? I mean, compare the Boston marathon bombing to that shooting in California last year?

I really don't see why gun control is playing such a big role in this case.

The guy was an Islamic extremist, he was going to kill people by any means necessary. If he didn't have a gun he would have used bombs like the guys in Boston and Brussels or he may have gotten one illegally like in Paris.

Damn right! That's why I never lock my door. Burglars would just get in by another way. /s

Seriously, if you want to argue that the costs of preventing a guy like this shooter to buy weapons is too high, you could, but this argument here is just dumb.

In other news, there was another terrorist attack by an ISIS-inspired lone wolf in France. Luckily, the attacker only had a knife, so the death toll is only two.

I work for a sheriff's department and can tell you: No, your locks do almost nothing to prevent burglary.
Most burglars plan for when your are away and plan for your house to be locked.
And for home invasions most actually knock first.

There was nothing preventing this guy from purchasing a gun. His record was totally clean, he could have gotten a gun license in the UK if he wanted.

Also, you are selectively forgetting a different attack that occurred in France recently despite AK variants being banned.

And, you know, because he was attacking a house with only 3 people in it. Hardly similar to a guy attacking a crowded bar.

Not really. If he attacked a bar he'd be mugged after stabbing several people.
Someone would just rise up to the challenge smash his face with a table leg or grab his knife hand and in a crowded place that's basically the end of the attack because other people will just join in and he'd be lucky if it didn't en in a curb stomp.

Mass Stabbings are a thing they just don't get sensationalized as much. The worse I heard about resulted in around 30 dead.

[Reelya]

There were a bunch of mass-stabbings in China, all involved little kids, because the perps want to get famous, but know that they have little chance of going and mass-stabbing other adults. So we should think of the children and hand these guys guns, so that they target adults.

And, you know, because he was attacking a house with only 3 people in it. Hardly similar to a guy attacking a crowded bar.

Perhaps the weapon he had access to played a part in what he chose to attack. He chose to only attack a house with three people in it. The very fact that this is the European equivalent of the nightclub shooting with 49 dead says something by itself.

Gun laws didn't prevent the Hebdo shooting. Sure. But how do we know what mass shootings in Europe would have happened if they had American style gun laws? Presumably, they'd have mass shootings as a similar rate to the U.S.A. if the hardware was available.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting#Europe
So there was the Paris shootings and the Hebdo shootings. How many mass shootings in Europe since the Brevik one? How many mass shootings in the USA since 2011? The very fact that we can still list Brevik's shooting as a current one in Europe says enough. Gun laws prevent all the mass shootings that would have happened in Europe at the rate they happen in America.

[Sonlirain]

Mass Stabbings are a thing they just don't get sensationalized as much. The worse I heard about resulted in around 30 dead.

Probably because you can't really ban all sharp objects ever. Or cars.
And there's a better chance of surviving a stabber than a gunman.
Plus knives have some other uses besides killing stuff while guns don't.

[penguinofhonor]

The real lesson here is that we should give our children  guns so they aren't easy targets.

[Erkki]

Mass Stabbings are a thing they just don't get sensationalized as much. The worse I heard about resulted in around 30 dead.

Probably because you can't really ban all sharp objects ever. Or cars.
And there's a better chance of surviving a stabber than a gunman.
Plus knives have some other uses besides killing stuff while guns don't.

Knives you say? https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives

Besides, being able to kill things can be very useful. Firearms have a lot of uses other than self/home defense, including but not limited to hunting, varminting and sports from range shooting to IPSC.

Now what I don't think anyone of us want is everyone being able to purchase a gun.

Because gun control laws in Europe totally stopped both Hebdo and 2015 attacks in Paris last time around.

Thats why the EU is making its firearm directing several magnitudes more strict and enforcing it to all member states. They're even suggesting ban of weapons that "look like military weapons" because nobody knows why. What is ridiculous is that Breivik's rifle, the Ruger Mini 14, is not one of those as it externally looks like a hunting rifle, and will remain okay for Brussels.

[Flying Dice]

All of which amount to the same thing: hobby shooting.

Legitimate non-trivial uses for guns are limited to people who need to keep predators away from their stock/children and people who need to hunt to feed themselves.

[Frumple]

Hitting this first because it's probably the most egregious thing I've seen since I went to sleep last night, but... will continue a lil'bit afterwards. Also this kept getting longer as y'all kept posting *fist shake*

Please don't look at firearm related deaths but firearm related homicides. Gun suicide isn't the same thing as gun violence.

Okay, no. Firearm suicides in the US account for about as many deaths as our total murder rate, around half of the total successful suicide numbers, while accounting for around a twentieth of the attempts; the immediate data I had on hand was from about a decade back, but so far as I'm aware those numbers haven't shifted to any particularly large degree. If it has, I'd love to hear about it, but to the best of my knowledge of the related trends those numbers are probably even worse today than back then. You... don't get to waive the issue of firearm access and suicide when it's one the major reasons better handling of gun control is being sought.

If you want less gun suicides, you ban guns. If you want less suicides overall (and particularly less successful ones), you still ban guns. Firearm access and saturation is not a 100% predictor of suicide rates (successful ones, in particular) or anything bloody stupid like that, but it's a damn good one. Not that many people are actually calling for a flat out ban, but saying that folks will just find a way at anything close to the current rate is just... very, very wrong. Suicide doesn't work like that. The ease of attempt has a massive influence on the likelihood of attempt, and how likely the method is to actually kill, somewhat unsurprisingly, is a very, very strong indicator both of the whether the person will die and whether they attempt it again if they don't (hint: Most survivors of a suicide attempt don't try a second time.). It's a subject complicated enough that cutting back on firearm access isn't necessarily a guaranteer that suicide deaths will substantially drop, but it's pretty close to one.

Data shows in Australia there was NO impact on violence, only on means. Sure there's less gun violence, but homicide rate remained constant.

This is incorrect. Data shows that overall homicide rates in australia have dropped notably compared to 1990, when their ban was introduced. You can see more recent numbers here. The homicide rate's been dropping, and has dropped by something like a bloody third. Violence in general has decreased in australia since the early 90s on almost all fronts -- the only things that haven't really budged are manslaughter and sexual assault, the latter of which is still coming down from a peak in the 2000s. Near as I can tell hunting even more recent numbers, there's been some increases in some areas/some fronts in the last few years, but you're still looking at things very much notably lower than in 1990. How much of that is due to the gun control implementation is questionable, as always, but saying that that things haven't changed much since it was implemented is in quite strong disagreement with the data available.

Incidentally, if any of y'all are interested in australia's data, this is pretty useful. Not perfect (it particularly lacks some of the more recent data, though it's not terribly difficult to cross check that), but useful.

UK I'm having a hell of a lot more trouble finding decent data on, and kinda' looks like they're not doing particularly good regardless so far as changes relative to itself goes. They should probably take a page from the aussie playbook of statistics reporting This looks like a pretty nice summary of the last decade and a half or so of homicide numbers, though. No bloody clue about the nature of the site itself, but they're claiming to use official statistics and those actual official statistics are something of a pain in the ass to navigate, so *shrugs* Does look like there's some weird shit going on related to the UK and statistics gathering/reporting, though.

I really don't see why gun control is playing such a big role in this case.

It's playing a big role because it's considered a representative example of what's being done wrong for both ends of the argument. 'Bout the only reason it gets as much involved discussion is just that it's also about the only thing that was involved in this shit that's particularly feasible to start doing anything about any time soon on any substantial level. Not entirely sure it's an actually major focus (the religious extremist angle seems to be being played a lot harder, ferex), but yeah.

As to some of the rest... guy could have ended up using bombs or whathaveyou, sure, but that is generally significantly harder to do, particularly in conditions that aren't exactly similar to those where most terrorist bombings are occurring. If we had to choose between people being forced to use guns to commit domestic atrocities, and being forced to use bombs... we'd almost certainly be a hell of a lot better off going with the latter. Much easier to see warning signs for, much more difficult to actually use, etc., etc., etc. At least in situations where there's not, y'know, organized groups and whatnot providing material and experience in sizable numbers.

Because gun control laws in Europe totally stopped both Hebdo and 2015 attacks in Paris last time around.

Seriously though, gun control laws have never been about totally stopping anything, save to the most bugnuts of proponents. That's not the point, it's never been the point, and it will never be the point. It's always about mitigation; reducing the number of attempts, reducing the number of fatalities, reducing the number of non-criminal incidents, so on, so forth. Usually in tandem with all the other stuff we're pretty bloody sure reduces such things (such as actual enforcement, sure). The extent it actually works varies by situation and particular metric, but generally the sentiment is that bloody anything is better than nothing at all. Add that generally the response to gun control that isn't pants-on-head (and is actually enforced) has been either positive or at least neutral on some or many of the issues involved with it, and you get a lot of the motivation for a lot of the people calling for it.

[Starver]

Don't know about Leytonstone, but the Lee Rigby killings was not for a lack of mechanisms, the jihadis who beheaded Lee did so because he was in military uniform and they wanted to kill a soldier.

And someone inspired by them got caught in possession of a firearm and having tried explosives, before trying his own version out.  I said it was only a rough comparison, so not sure whether you're even in disagreement with me and the point I was making.

(Leytonstone's attack was with a comparatively blunt but serated kitchen knife, from all reports on the news. Deep neck wounds were inflicted, whilst proclaiming support for one or other Syrian factions, but being denounced as "You aint no muslimz bruv'" by one of the witnesses/interveners.  If he) had had a gun, it would have been worse.  But sounds like he never got the opportunity of trying anything like that.)

[LoSboccacc]

If you want less gun suicides, you ban guns. If you want less suicides overall (and particularly less successful ones), you still ban guns. Firearm access and saturation is not a 100% predictor of suicide rates (successful ones, in particular) or anything bloody stupid like that, but it's a damn good one.

[citation needed] - and also see: japan, finland data about suicide rates

This is incorrect. Data shows that overall homicide rates in Australia have dropped notably compared to 1990, when their ban was introduced.

again, there is NO correlation about ban and homicide dropping. trend was there before gun ban and remained almost unchanged after. there is correlation about homicide with guns, but not about overall trends it didn't change a lot.


look, you need to start showing correlation and not just point of data in space, because violence is diminishing thanks to a wealth of factors and gun presence doesn't seem to be one of those so far.

[Sonlirain]

Knives you say? https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives

Show me a home without a kitchen knife and i'll show you someone who only eats instant ramen at home.

Besides, being able to kill things can be very useful. Firearms have a lot of uses other than self/home defense, including but not limited to hunting, varminting and sports from range shooting to IPSC.

self/home defense is literally threatening to kill (the attacker/burglar) or even actually killing another being be it a human burglar or encroaching bear (something you won't see unless you live in the boonies or on the american frontier 200 years ago).
Hunting/varminting IS again killing (killing of unwanted pests but still).
Sports and range shooting are preparing the user (for killing efficiently).

Not saying guns are pure evil but saying they serve other uses than being a killing instrument is incorrect.
I can use a hammer to bash your skull in or a nail into a board but there is no such duality with guns unless they are in the right hands.

[MasterFancyPants]

There were a bunch of mass-stabbings in China, all involved little kids, because the perps want to get famous, but know that they have little chance of going and mass-stabbing other adults. So we should think of the children and hand these guys guns, so that they target adults.

And, you know, because he was attacking a house with only 3 people in it. Hardly similar to a guy attacking a crowded bar.

Perhaps the weapon he had access to played a part in what he chose to attack. He chose to only attack a house with three people in it. The very fact that this is the European equivalent of the nightclub shooting with 49 dead says something by itself.

Gun laws didn't prevent the Hebdo shooting. Sure. But how do we know what mass shootings in Europe would have happened if they had American style gun laws? Presumably, they'd have mass shootings as a similar rate to the U.S.A. if the hardware was available.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shooting#Europe
So there was the Paris shootings and the Hebdo shootings. How many mass shootings in Europe since the Brevik one? How many mass shootings in the USA since 2011? The very fact that we can still list Brevik's shooting as a current one in Europe says enough. Gun laws prevent all the mass shootings that would have happened in Europe at the rate they happen in America.

Nope, one I'm talking about was at a train station. 29 dead, 130 injured.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/01/world/asia/china-railway-attack/

Mass Stabbings are a thing they just don't get sensationalized as much. The worse I heard about resulted in around 30 dead.

Probably because you can't really ban all sharp objects ever. Or cars.
And there's a better chance of surviving a stabber than a gunman.
Plus knives have some other uses besides killing stuff while guns don't.

How about hunting, collecting, sports, hobby, reenactments, signaling... etc.
This argument is tired. Should we also ban: cars that go over 50 mph and pools? Both aren't really needed and kill more people than guns.