Any thoughts on the mall gunman

Perhaps because it has such a large population, it has a larger percentage of nutters, therefore making it a more dangerous place to live, especially since there are no laws preventing people from owning guns. Here, in a country with just slightly over 20 million people, we do have laws restricting gun ownership and I feel MUCH safer. Given the climate, the scenery and the wonderful, friendly people ( for the most part ), I wouldn't live anywhere else and I grew up in Canada, another great country!!

You know folks, there are permits required to legally own a gun in the USA. It's not like there's a bucket of assault rifles next to the bread at Kroger or a box of Glocks next to the Bioshock display at Gamestop.

How easy are these permits to get though? AND, I suppose we have to acknowledge that little word 'legally' as well!!

Far too easy, IMO. The fact that the system is so abused only adds ammo (if you will) to the gun lobby's contention that "if ya outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns". It's really a sticky subject--there's no good answer short of putting the genie back in the bottle, which is decidedly impractical as well as unconstitutional.

Prime Junta, you're right. The odds in any sort of civilian uprising here are extremely unbalanced. I can't think of a good answer for you. Should civilians be allowed to practice insurgency and equip themselves properly? Sure. Would I want them to? No. I'd be happy if everybody just sat around smoking pot and making love. The only honest way to put the scale of civilians and military power back into balance would be to drastically cut back on the military power. But, that's obviously not going to happen.

As a side note, I've found myself becoming very jaded and disgusted with America. I've even considered moving to another country when my enlistment with the navy expires. One just happens to be Finland (My grandparents are Finnish, so I figured it might be a logical place to look into. ). Maybe.

This country would be a better place without all these damn guns. The right to bear arms was probably a good idea at the time, but we haven't had to worry about the Red Coats for quite a while now. It's time to amend the Constitution.

There are so many guns in this country that it's just not that hard for criminals to obtain them illegally. So banning them would immediately make victims a lot more vulnerable to criminals, and nobody wants that. Like it or not, guns are an effective means of self-protection, especially for women.

We need to get rid of nearly all the guns and at the same time get rid of the crazy idea that everyone should have the right to own one.

As has been said, getting rid of all guns would be the perfect solution, but until someone comes up with that magic wand that will make them all go poof, you will never get the votes needed to amend the constitution.

If the bad guys all have them, the good guys feel they have the right to protect themselves. As Squeek said, many see it as an equalizer in the fight to self preservation.

When something like this happens, awareness and outrage is heightened. When someone is shot for petty cash, the same thing happens, but then it is a call to arms. Requests for permits increase for a few weeks every time.

Every time there is a push for banning guns, the bad guys shot some innocent and the movement swings the other way. People on the average don't see the long term possibility that a ban might, over time, decrease the number of guns in the hands of criminals. At least that is the theory. It is that uncertainty that keeps a good number on the fence. And keeps politicians from backing a ban. They don't want to be the one everyone points at when some poor soul who gave up his gun is found dead in his home.

I just don't see it happening any time soon.

Korplem said:

As a side note, I've found myself becoming very jaded and disgusted with America. I've even considered moving to another country when my enlistment with the navy expires. One just happens to be Finland (My grandparents are Finnish, so I figured it might be a logical place to look into. ). Maybe.

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Well, before you make the leap, be sure to spend a couple of months here, specifically November through January. If you can survive that, you'll probably do fine.

Here's a photo I took a couple of days ago to give you an idea of what I'm talking about (no, it's not in black and white):

I've spent most of my life in Minnesota so I assume Finland couldn't be much worse.

I'm afraid it could. Minnesota is the same latitude as France, while Finland is the same latitude as Greenland (although Greenland does continue further north). That means that between November and January it's dark. Technically the sun is above the horizon in most of the country, but it's low and you hardly ever see it because of the weather.

I took that photo around noon, and it's from the southern coast of Finland. That's as light as it gets this time of year.

Do anyone have any breakdown of different kinds of gun violence in the US? I suspect that while tragedies such as the mall shooting get the media attention they are insignificant outliers from a statistical point of view... And those outliers happen in other countries too (at least Scotland, Germany, Australia, Sweden, and Finland had such incidents in the last 15 years IIRC). The rate of lunatics with the potential to freak out is likely the same across the western world...

Prime Junta said:

Here in Finland we have a lot of guns and a lot of lonely people, and of course our share of unbalanced individuals. However, we have a very low rate of gun violence. Why? I believe it's because "inspiration" is missing from the mix I outlined above. The Finnish way is quiet suicide or a drunken rampage with a bread knife, not a school shooting.

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I think one large component in the high rate of US gun violence is simple user friendliness. Finland, and most other western countries with high rates of gun ownership, mainly have hunting rifles (and shotguns) in legal circulation. These weapons are optimized for killing game in the forest and fairly impractical to use against fellow human beings in an urban setting. And a worse "user interface" means it takes more premeditation and effort to put the item to actual use. So I'd venture to say that some of the situations that blow up with handguns easily available might have had the time to cool down if only less practical weapons had been at hand.

Yes, I'm sure they are statistical outliers. Still, the only Australian incident occurred prior to gun control and my personal opinion is that availability of the weapon played an obvious role. Further, I believe further incidents (of that type) in Australia would be most unlikely - it's simply nearly impossible for a disturbed teenager to get their hands on an automatic weapon.

There are breakdowns of the different types of gun deaths out there on the 'net but, to be honest, the statistics are very hard to use. For everyone that points out the US' very high gun homicide rate (for a Western country), someone else will point out a European country with high gun ownership but low death rate (say, the Swiss). In the end, I think it's simple common sense that availability enables disturbed individuals to take the next step but not everyone will agree.

Zaleukos said:

I think one large component in the high rate of US gun violence is simple user friendliness. Finland, and most other western countries with high rates of gun ownership, mainly have hunting rifles (and shotguns) in legal circulation. These weapons are optimized for killing game in the forest and fairly impractical to use against fellow human beings in an urban setting. And a worse "user interface" means it takes more premeditation and effort to put the item to actual use. So I'd venture to say that some of the situations that blow up with handguns easily available might have had the time to cool down if only less practical weapons had been at hand.

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There are a quite a few pistols in circulation as well. Shooting is not an uncommon hobby here.

One thing that may have something do with it, though, is military service. Most men in Finland spend between six months and a year running in the woods with an assault rifle. That's pretty effective at taking the romance out of guns, as well as teaching basic gun safety practices. As a result, I believe the vast majority of gun owners behave pretty responsibly with their weapons -- they store them locked up and unloaded, which does mean that the unpremeditated "pick it up and blast" kind of thing is less likely.

Prime Junta said:

There are a quite a few pistols in circulation as well. Shooting is not an uncommon hobby here.

One thing that may have something do with it, though, is military service. Most men in Finland spend between six months and a year running in the woods with an assault rifle. That's pretty effective at taking the romance out of guns, as well as teaching basic gun safety practices. As a result, I believe the vast majority of gun owners behave pretty responsibly with their weapons -- they store them locked up and unloaded, which does mean that the unpremeditated "pick it up and blast" kind of thing is less likely.

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Agree that learning good safety practices in the military (or through serious hunting, shooting clubs, or whatever) help. But I also assume that Finland like Sweden has rather strict laws regardings how the weapons have to be kept (more or less disassembled in a safe in our case), and has rather harsh restrictions on carrying the weapons in public compared to the US, which probably makes a bigger difference.

A quick googling netted this article http://www.unicri.it/wwk/publications/books/series/understanding/19_GUN_OWNERSHIP.pdf and (assuming the -89 numbers still hold, I dont really see any reason for them to have changed all that much) it does seem like most of the Finnish pistol owners also own some kind of hunting weapons. The US statistic OTOH indicates that a lot of people (still a minority of the gun owners, but a much larger one) only own pistols or revolvers. Btw, I was surprised by the number of pistols in circulation in Finland.

Yes, I'm sure they are statistical outliers. Still, the only Australian incident occurred prior to gun control and my personal opinion is that availability of the weapon played an obvious role. Further, I believe further incidents (of that type) in Australia would be most unlikely - it's simply nearly impossible for a disturbed teenager to get their hands on an automatic weapon.

There are breakdowns of the different types of gun deaths out there on the 'net but, to be honest, the statistics are very hard to use. For everyone that points out the US' very high gun homicide rate (for a Western country), someone else will point out a European country with high gun ownership but low death rate (say, the Swiss). In the end, I think it's simple common sense that availability enables disturbed individuals to take the next step but not everyone will agree.

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I'm fairly certain that the fewer guns in circulation, the better. My point was more that "extra deaths" probably come more from more heavily armed criminals (due to an expectation of armed law abiding citizens and even heavier police weaponry), from "crimes of passion" (of which these massacres are a small subset) easier leading to fatalities (we had a loon who went berserk with a iron bar in central Stockholm a few years ago, he could have caused a lot more damage with a gun), and plain accidents than from these horrible massacres (which I think are impossible to prevent without giving up more essential freedoms than gun ownership).

And those who try to muddle the waters by claiming that gun ownership rate in any civilised country is comparable to the US are of course muddling the waters. No other western country is even close to the US, especially when it comes to handguns.

Oh, and @Korplem -- don't get me wrong, there are worse places to live than Finland; however, it's nowhere near as nice a country as most Finns would like to believe. Especially for immigrants. We have a nasty climate and a pretty inwards-turned culture; even though most of us speak English, it isn't easy to get your foot in the door. Perhaps it's changing, but not quickly.

I understand. Thanks for the information.

You are all talking about the dangers of guns, but making guns dissapear wouldn't change a lot. Look at england, how many youngsters have been killed with a knive only the last few months? look at belgium that has a strict laws about guns and then think of Hans Van Temsche.
It has nothing to do with the kind of weapons, but all to do with the people, their psyche, the way they are raised and wich standars they have.