33 dead people in university

[PyTom]

As for the concealed weapons, as a college student I know I sure wouldn't feel safer knowing that a fair amount of people I'm encountering might be carrying a gun. A lot of times disagreements escalate into arguments, arguments escalate into fights, and...you get the idea. On the other hand, there is the dilemma of what to do about these situations where the authorities are not able to respond in time.

Why? In Oregon, 3.86% of the population has a concealed carry permit. That's one of the largest fractions in the country. That means you've almost certainly been in situations where someone nearby has a concealed weapon, and you never knew it.

While the idea of disagreements escalating into gun violence might seem to make sense, a decade or so of experience doesn't show that happening.

From what I heard, in Virginia you can get a gun within 10 minutes - no background check or anything. I think that's a prime example of irresponsible gun laws if true.

This isn't the case. To buy a firearm in the US, you need to pass a federal instant background check, where they check your criminal record. If you have a criminal record, you're denied. (This happened to a friend of mine who shares a name with a criminal. Each time it happens, he has to mail the FBI to clear it up.)

The CCW permit is even harder to get. It generally involves a more serious background check, a class, and so on.

A mental health professional that judged that "Cho did not present an imminent danger to others". (source)
If they had decided that he did present a threat, then he would have been blocked.

[Blue Lemma]

3.86% of college students though? And that's a smaller amount than what I'm talking about. What gets me the most is that people knew this guy was trouble, and nothing ended up being done really. He was turning in violent writings, and had been involved with the police and put in a mental health institution for a while. I wonder what he was doing out if he was this unstable

[chisa-chan]

I read this news in the yesterday's newspaper.

I wonder, is the law that weak? Isn't there good restrictions?

In here is rather worse nowadays. Ever since the continuous murder within the police here, all of the firearms are pulled from both the polices and regulars (to retest whether the people can have firearms or not).

The result is the culprits can take actions easily (even two polices died last week when tried to stop robbery in here).

[Adorya]

Pytom> I can scan the article where I read that on my newspaper if you want, but of course my local is a condensed resume of national ones, no sources are given so I can't garentee if it's true (though it's not impossible that hate may be redirected to affiliate people as usual, you know what happen usually to blog with quick reply option...)

Anyway about the weapon problem, how this student was able to buy a weapon? Because he was able to hide his MPD? Usually people who are making massacre like these don't have any background case, there were just warnings (professors, students...), but they were still not enough to prevent the fact that he was planning something big. The only thing that could have prevented him from buying a weapon would be to not find a weapon store (even in that case, he could have made a bomb or something like that).

While I agree that the police can't be everywhere, I disagree about letting anyone be able to get a weapon to defend themself. If it should be like that, then why not let North Corea or Iran get his own nuclear weapon? If every country has a bomb, they could "defend themself" huh?
That is why I am against that rule because its logic is flawed at the end, but the fight will end faster, ne?

[lordcloudx]

then why not let North Corea or Iran get his own nuclear weapon? If every country has a bomb, they could "defend themself" huh? Rolling Eyes

From another less-sarcastic perspective, what gives any other nation the right to pre-empt other independent nations from owning/creating such nuclear weapons?

[mokenju1]

From another less-sarcastic perspective, what gives any other nation the right to pre-empt other independent nations from owning/creating such nuclear weapons?

To not let crazy evil dictators destroy the world maybe?. I thought that it was the reason the ONU was created. To prevent war creating "laws" everyone has to respect. It's a shame the ONU has became nowadays something so laughable though...

EDIT: Sorry I didn't realize ONU is UN in English .

[Adorya]

The crazy dictator using nuclear weapon argment is old now, geopolitic is more complex than that, for someone to use the nuke, he has to have a very big political/army/economic support to back him up on every side of his country because there is no doubt those nearby will retaliate on him with the same weapon if they feel endangered.

Intricate foreign politic is so much dense now that it is no more possible to use the nuke, it's more like a pride of a nation, there are better way to kill an enemy (guerilla war is by far the best way to slow down one while terrorist attack + mass media war is best to tame the masses).

[lordcloudx]

Hehe this is turning into a political science discusson.


Ah yes, but even the U.N. has no power over the internal affairs of independent states and I believe it was established for mutual development of member states.

To not let crazy evil dictators destroy the world maybe?. I thought that it was the reason the ONU was created. To prevent war creating "laws" everyone has to respect. It's a shame the ONU has became nowadays something so laughable though...

EDIT: Sorry I didn't realize ONU is UN in English Rolling Eyes .

So still, what gives one state the right to judge another's leader for developing weapons of mass destruction? Note that the U.N. is not a state but an international organization exercising absolutely no sovereignty over the affairs of other states.

Also, the U.N.'s rules do not have the force and effect of law since from the point of view of international law, all states are equal, thus there can be no penal sanctions for disobedience.

Note also that NATO the U.N.'s military arm did not participate aggressively in the IRAQ conflict.

[mokenju1]

Hmmm... so we should see how Iran wants to have a nuclear weapon and look to the other side?. What are they going to do with it? Make some christmas greetings to their neighbours?. But it seems that since Irak "preventive" wars are not that popular now

IMHO it's not the first time that some countries have been scared of what one country could be planning to do. One of the last times, there were people who thought that there was no need to fight against Hitler and History has proven who were right and who were wrong.

It's a beautiful ilusion to think that U.N. is an asociation where all the countries have the same power, but that is a lie. So in the end, there are some powerful countries that are the ones who are going to decide what the U.N. is going to do in the end. And actually the lack of power of the U.N. makes me believe that it's something pretty unnecesary now. They can make suggestions and some humanitary works and make some beautiful declarations, and this is good. But this organization shouldn't be created "only" to do this. And if we take a closer look at why countries like France were against the Irak war (and that was one of the reasons the U.N. didn't aprove that war) we could find that economical and political interests were behind many of them, in the same way USA had its own reasons.

So yes, it would be great that a "good" country could rule the world, why not?. And if there is no such thing as a good country that could rule the world I would always prefer the ones that think they should do something when a country becomes dangerous for the others than the ones than prefer waiting to see if they are going to be attacked or not. But that's only me .

[Jake]

While the idea of disagreements escalating into gun violence might seem to make sense, a decade or so of experience doesn't show that happening.

Doesn't this only hold for legally-owned weapons, though? Or are all those stories of rappers gunning each other down and gang turf wars killing fourteen-year-olds the rare exception? Not that there isn't a good reason to believe that people who already own illegal firearms aren't more likely to be predisposed towards acting illegally with them, of course.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that a significant proportion of gun homicides in the US were committed with the victim's own gun, as well, but I can't find a reference offhand so it could equally have been my imagination...

I'm not entirely sure where I stand on gun control, to be honest; I'm broadly libertarian, so I ought to be broadly against it, but having grown up in Britain (where we have amazingly strict gun laws) I can't say I haven't noticed the probable benefit of control. On-topic, we've seen a single school shooting in my entire lifetime (Dunblane), whereas in the time since then Wikipedia lists 16 separate incidents in the US, which only has five times our population, and two in Canada, which has about half our population. Hardly enough data to form a firm statistical conclusion, but... well, it can't be ignored, either. Gun homicide, I believe, is equally low, although not non-existent.

So, yeah. The one thing I can fairly safely suggest is that you're unlikely to ever get a properly-rational discussion on gun control immediately after a serious gun-related crime, people on both sides of the debate will be certain that terrible event x could have been avoided if only their ideals on gun ownership had been implemented a year earlier. :/

Note also that NATO the U.N.'s military arm did not participate aggressively in the IRAQ conflict.

Actually, NATO isn't really related to the UN at all, it's the "North Atlantic Treaty Organisation", established by the treaty of the same name, separate to the United Nations. The main reason for its establishment was the existence of the looming Soviet threat in post-war years, and it's generally considered to have been the natural adversary to the Warsaw Pact... the signatories of which were also members of the UN.

The fundamental problem with the UN in terms of world security is that the security council has the most powerful countries in the world sitting with vetos regardless of how responsible they behave - and naturally, it wouldn't work at all any other way. So in terms of resolving conflicts between any two or more of these powerful countries - for instance, the US, the UK and France versus Russia and China - the security council serves only as a mediating force, it cannot produce a direct action. So subsets of those countries form independent organisations like NATO in order to act in concert outside of the UN.

To my knowledge, NATO hasn't ever directly acted on a UN mandate. To the contrary, particularly in the Kosovo conflict in the mid-late nineties, they were specifically operating without one. The UN does have its own military force, though, IIRC formed from units on loan from member states, which primarily takes part in peacekeeping missions rather than invasions.

(Also, 'Iraq' isn't an acronym. )

[lordcloudx]

yah Jake it's the name of a state, I just typed that up in a hurry, but I stand corrected... kinda anyway.

Although the formal link between the United Nations and the North Atlantic Alliance has been enshrined in their respective founding documents since the foundation of the Alliance in 1949, working relations between the United Nations and the Alliance remained limited for most of this period. The situation changed in 1992, against the background of growing conflict in the western Balkans, where their respective roles in crisis management led to an intensification of practical cooperation between the two organisations.

not entirely.

edit: didn't see this in mokenju1's post

It's a beautiful ilusion to think that U.N. is an asociation where all the countries have the same power, but that is a lie. So in the end, there are some powerful countries that are the ones who are going to decide what the U.N. is going to do in the end.

This much might be true in practice, but in theory, all countries should share the same weight under the U.N. since each member-state has only one vote.

[mokenju1]

This much might be true in practice, but in theory, all countries should share the same weight under the U.N. since each member-state has only one vote.

They can't have the same weight when the powerful ones have right to veto and the others not like Jake has said before.

[lordcloudx]

true enough. I think this requires some reform in the interest of equity.

[PyTom]

Anyway about the weapon problem, how this student was able to buy a weapon? Because he was able to hide his MPD? Usually people who are making massacre like these don't have any background case, there were just warnings (professors, students...), but they were still not enough to prevent the fact that he was planning something big.

Yes. I'm starting from the position that bad guys will always be able to get guns... I don't see any way of stopping that, in the US at least. So the question is, will the good guys be able to stop them?

If it should be like that, then why not let North Corea or Iran get his own nuclear weapon?

It's always a bad idea to try to analogize the international with the national. For one thing, there's no equivalent of the state on the international arena, an entity with the ability to make rules that others must follow, or risk punishment. (The UN is basically worthless in this regard.)

Also, it's not fair to compare a nuclear weapon (a WMD, which is basically only useful to attack), with a handgun, which has quite useful defensive purposes. Probably a more fair comparison would be if the North Koreans or Iranians should be allowed to own ABMs or Tanks... both yes.

Jake >>> The reductions in crime I mentioned have been occurring across the board, gang turf wars and all. If we limit ourselves to CCW permit holder, Texas (which keeps stats) reports that they 39% (if I did the math right) less murders per capita then the public as a whole, and that no licensee has been arrested for negligent manslaughter (ie. keeping a gun out where kids can play with it.)

That makes sense... CCW permit holder are screened, and hence less likely to commit crimes then the public at large.

(Also, it might be unfair to only count shootings. Wikipedia lists two other UK school attacks, one using a flamethrower, the other a machete. To be fair, it also lists a number of other US attacks.)

[F.I.A]

A condolence to Librescu for the ordeal he did. It could have been worse without him.

I myself also find firearm possession as ridiculous in a way. If a twenty years old immature kid can own it, I wonder what will happen next.

That kid certainly got some mental problem. Now I will really pity the treatment his parents might have to take.

"Guns don't kill people. Idiots do."