Moore on Aurora.

[Stiltzkin]

Since Cain went nuts and whacked Abel, there have always been those humans who, for one reason or another, go temporarily or permanently insane and commit unspeakable acts of violence. There was the Roman Emperor Tiberius, who during the first century A.D. enjoyed throwing victims off a cliff on the Mediterranean island of Capri. Gilles de Rais, a French knight and ally of Joan of Arc during the middle ages, went cuckoo-for-Cocoa Puffs one day and ended up murdering hundreds of children. Just a few decades later Vlad the Impaler, the inspiration for Dracula, was killing people in Transylvania in numberless horrifying ways.

In modern times, nearly every nation has had a psychopath or two commit a mass murder, regardless of how strict their gun laws are – the crazed white supremacist in Norway one year ago Sunday, the schoolyard butcher in Dunblane, Scotland, the École Polytechnique killer in Montreal, the mass murderer in Erfurt, Germany … the list seems endless.

And now the Aurora shooter last Friday. There have always been insane people, and there always will be.

But here's the difference between the rest of the world and us: We have TWO Auroras that take place every single day of every single year! At least 24 Americans every day (8-9,000 a year) are killed by people with guns – and that doesn't count the ones accidentally killed by guns or who commit suicide with a gun. Count them and you can triple that number to over 25,000.

That means the United States is responsible for over 80% of all the gun deaths in the 23 richest countries combined. Considering that the people of those countries, as human beings, are no better or worse than any of us, well, then, why us?

Both conservatives and liberals in America operate with firmly held beliefs as to "the why" of this problem. And the reason neither can find their way out of the box toward a real solution is because, in fact, they're both half right.

The right believes that the Founding Fathers, through some sort of divine decree, have guaranteed them the absolute right to own as many guns as they desire. And they will ceaselessly remind you that a gun cannot fire itself – that "Guns don't kill people, people kill people."

Of course, they know they're being intellectually dishonest (if I can use that word) when they say that about the Second Amendment because they know the men who wrote the constitution just wanted to make sure a militia could be quickly called up from amongst the farmers and merchants should the Brits decide to return and wreak some havoc.

But they are half right when they say "Guns don't kill people." I would just alter that slogan slightly to speak the real truth: "Guns don't kill people, Americans kill people."

Because we're the only ones in the first world who do this en masse. And you'll hear all stripes of Americans come up with a host of reasons so that they don't have to deal with what's really behind all this murder and mayhem.

They'll say it's the violent movies and video games that are responsible. Last time I checked, the movies and video games in Japan are more violent than ours – and yet usually fewer than 20 people a year are killed there with guns – and in 2006 the number was two!

Others will say it's the number of broken homes that lead to all this killing. I hate to break this to you, but there are almost as many single-parent homes in the U.K. as there are here – and yet, in Great Britain, there are usually fewer than 40 gun murders a year.

People like me will say this is all the result of the U.S. having a history and a culture of men with guns, "cowboys and Indians," "shoot first and ask questions later." And while it is true that the mass genocide of the Native Americans set a pretty ugly model to found a country on, I think it's safe to say we're not the only ones with a violent past or a penchant for genocide. Hello, Germany! That's right I'm talking about you and your history, from the Huns to the Nazis, just loving a good slaughter (as did the Japanese, and the British who ruled the world for hundreds of years – and they didn't achieve that through planting daisies). And yet in Germany, a nation of 80 million people, there are only around 200 gun murders a year.

So those countries (and many others) are just like us – except for the fact that more people here believe in God and go to church than any other Western nation.

My liberal compatriots will tell you if we just had less guns, there would be less gun deaths. And, mathematically, that would be true. If you have less arsenic in the water supply, it will kill less people. Less of anything bad – calories, smoking, reality TV – will kill far fewer people. And if we had strong gun laws that prohibited automatic and semi-automatic weapons and banned the sale of large magazines that can hold a gazillion bullets, well, then shooters like the man in Aurora would not be able to shoot so many people in just a few minutes.

But this, too, has a problem. There are plenty of guns in Canada (mostly hunting rifles) – and yet the annual gun murder count in Canada is around 200 deaths. In fact, because of its proximity, Canada's culture is very similar to ours – the kids play the same violent video games, watch the same movies and TV shows, and yet they don't grow up wanting to kill each other. Switzerland has the third-highest number of guns per capita on earth, but still a low murder rate.

So – why us?

I posed this question a decade ago in my film 'Bowling for Columbine,' and this week, I have had little to say because I feel I said what I had to say ten years ago – and it doesn't seem to have done a whole lot of good other than to now look like it was actually a crystal ball posing as a movie.

This is what I said then, and it is what I will say again today:

1. We Americans are incredibly good killers. We believe in killing as a way of accomplishing our goals. Three-quarters of our states execute criminals, even though the states with the lower murder rates are generally the states with no death penalty.

Our killing is not just historical (the slaughter of Indians and slaves and each other in a "civil" war). It is our current way of resolving whatever it is we're afraid of. It's invasion as foreign policy. Sure there's Iraq and Afghanistan – but we've been invaders since we "conquered the wild west" and now we're hooked so bad we don't even know where to invade (bin Laden wasn't hiding in Afghanistan, he was in Pakistan) or what to invade for (Saddam had zero weapons of mass destruction and nothing to do with 9/11). We send our lower classes off to do the killing, and the rest of us who don't have a loved one over there don't spend a single minute of any given day thinking about the carnage. And now we send in remote pilotless planes to kill, planes that are being controlled by faceless men in a lush, air conditioned studio in suburban Las Vegas. It is madness.

2. We are an easily frightened people and it is easy to manipulate us with fear. What are we so afraid of that we need to have 300 million guns in our homes? Who do we think is going to hurt us? Why are most of these guns in white suburban and rural homes? Maybe we should fix our race problem and our poverty problem (again, #1 in the industrialized world) and then maybe there would be fewer frustrated, frightened, angry people reaching for the gun in the drawer. Maybe we would take better care of each other (here's a good example of what I mean).

Those are my thoughts about Aurora and the violent country I am a citizen of. Like I said, I spelled it all out here if you'd like to watch it or share it for free with others. All we're lacking here, my friends, is the courage and the resolve. I'm in if you are.

[oth]

sadly there are a lot of idiots in this country that scream and yell that psychotic peeps must not have their right to buy,own,operate guns denied.Would you let a child molester babysit your kids?Same deal.The Virginia Tech killer,Gabby Giffords assasin and now this Holmes lunatic were all diagnosed schizos.They should never,ever be allowed to buy guns-duh?A person that defends psychos buying guns is really so off the charts-moronic its unimaginable but yet that is the state of mind of many here in the usa today.

[Paul Wolfe]

sadly there are a lot of idiots in this country that scream and yell that psychotic peeps must not have their right to buy,own,operate guns denied.Would you let a child molester babysit your kids?Same deal.The Virgina Tech killer,Gabby Giffords assasin and now this Holmes lunatic were all diagnosed schizos.They should never,ever be allowed to buy guns-duh?A person that defends psychos buying guns is really so off the charts moronic its unimaginable but yet that is the state of mind of many here today.

I couldn't agree more!

[dannyahansen]

I would like a reference for the VA Tech shooter and Holmes that says they were "schizos". The dude in AZ was.

Note I am not defending the actions of these tards. Just wanting to be accurate.

Also I am not aware of many people (if any, I know of no one that is) that are claiming that mentally ill people should own guns. This appears to be a straw man.

nd if we had strong gun laws that prohibited automatic and semi-automatic weapons and banned the sale of large magazines that can hold a gazillion bullets, well, then shooters like the man in Aurora would not be able to shoot so many people in just a few minutes.

This needs to be fleshed out. This is about the dumbest argument I constantly hear. Having 100 round magazine is not an issue. In case people don't know the gun jammed and he did most the killing with a shot gun. The other thing is that even if he killed them all with this AR-15 and say there was a ban on magazines 30 rounds or more all one would need to do is just get 100, 20 round magazines. Tell me, how does that solve the issue of killing people with magazines that "have a gazillion rounds"? It is just like that idiot mayor of New York that bans sodas that are bigger than 30 oz. What the hell does that accomplish? I will just buy 2. Der.

I am not sure what the solution here is. They guys appears to have a spotless record and so far appears to have no mental illness.

I am sure a lively debate will now take place. I think we have fairly strong gun laws as it is. The key seems to be education. And I think the OP has generalized much and really doesn't seem to know what he is talking about.

[rice_pudding]

This needs to be fleshed out. This is about the dumbest argument I constantly hear. Having 100 round magazine is not an issue. In case people don't know the gun jammed and he did most the killing with a shot gun. The other thing is that even if he killed them all with this AR-15 and say there was a ban on magazines 30 rounds or more all one would need to do is just get 100, 20 round magazines. Tell me, how does that solve the issue of killing people with magazines that "have a gazillion rounds"? It is just like that idiot mayor of New York that bans sodas that are bigger than 30 oz. What the hell does that accomplish? I will just buy 2. Der.

+1 for logic

Short of banning gun's outright, the most sensible thing may be to severely limit the amount of ammunition someone can own. If people go to a firing range, well fine, but the ammo stays on the range, locked up. But in your house how much do you need? Even if your dead serious about "needing to defend yourself" , a revolver holds six shots. More than enough to kill a man last time I checked. Do you need to reload and kill him again?

It would be insanely difficult to regulate and would probably take years, but who knows. Personally I think gun ownership is pointless, I'm glad we don't allow it over here. But I'm pragmatic and realise your not just going to get rid of them all. Taking away the ability to use them in anger is the next best thing.

As ridiculous as it sounds, even a machine gun is relatively docile in comparison to other firearms, if it only has 10 rounds.

Rob

[oth]

I would like a reference for the VA Tech shooter and Holmes that says they were "schizos". The dude in AZ was.

Note I am not defending the actions of these tards. Just wanting to be accurate.

Also I am not aware of many people (if any, I know of no one that is) that are claiming that mentally ill people should own guns. This appears to be a straw man.

nd if we had strong gun laws that prohibited automatic and semi-automatic weapons and banned the sale of large magazines that can hold a gazillion bullets, well, then shooters like the man in Aurora would not be able to shoot so many people in just a few minutes.

This needs to be fleshed out. This is about the dumbest argument I constantly hear. Having 100 round magazine is not an issue. In case people don't know the gun jammed and he did most the killing with a shot gun. The other thing is that even if he killed them all with this AR-15 and say there was a ban on magazines 30 rounds or more all one would need to do is just get 100, 20 round magazines. Tell me, how does that solve the issue of killing people with magazines that "have a gazillion rounds"? It is just like that idiot mayor of New York that bans sodas that are bigger than 30 oz. What the hell does that accomplish? I will just buy 2. Der.

I am not sure what the solution here is. They guys appears to have a spotless record and so far appears to have no mental illness.

I am sure a lively debate will now take place. I think we have fairly strong gun laws as it is. The key seems to be education. And I think the OP has generalized much and really doesn't seem to know what he is talking about.

so do you think mentally incompetent and psychotic people should be allowed to buy,use guns?
Yes or No?




People need to be screened and tested before buying any gun especially these large clip,human-killing rifles.

[Tito]

shit all a nut needs is a knife bat etc its not the guns its the people behind them!!!

[RRFan4Ever]

Imo its not the weaponry because plenty of people who can't or shouldn't own guns can always get them illegally, what I wanna know is what the sam hell is causing my fellow Americans to lose their fucking minds?

[Stiltzkin]

+1 for logic

Short of banning gun's outright, the most sensible thing may be to severely limit the amount of ammunition someone can own. If people go to a firing range, well fine, but the ammo stays on the range, locked up. But in your house how much do you need? Even if your dead serious about "needing to defend yourself" , a revolver holds six shots. More than enough to kill a man last time I checked. Do you need to reload and kill him again?

It would be insanely difficult to regulate and would probably take years, but who knows. Personally I think gun ownership is pointless, I'm glad we don't allow it over here. But I'm pragmatic and realise your not just going to get rid of them all. Taking away the ability to use them in anger is the next best thing.

As ridiculous as it sounds, even a machine gun is relatively docile in comparison to other firearms, if it only has 10 rounds.

Rob

you know, I get your point, as a fellow european.
most of the gun-toting americans I've talked to, or have heard talk, about this defends their gunowning
pointing at the 2nd amendment. I know there's one guy over the Dean Guitars forum who carries his gun
with him wherever he goes, not because he's scared or threatened, because he can and has the right to so,
which to me only says that he's carrying just in case he gets a chance to use it.

#1-Yup.....depending on where you live, most states allow you to carry a gun(depending on age and criminal history), and a lot of people do. I can, and I choose to...mostly for disparity of force. The state I live in is very progressive as far as gun laws go, and I choose to take advantage of that, as does my wife and brothers and uncles and aunts and a whole lot of my friends. We follow along with the idea that an armed society is a polite society; meaning that if a criminal thinks you might have a gun, he's probably going to choose someone else...and if you're a Law-Abiding Citizen in a place that doesn't allow firearms, then the criminal will be the only one with a gun. Most LACs that carry don't go into places that don't allow them to carry firearms. Utah(the state I live in)doesn't give any legal weight to private businesses that post signs dis-allowing firearms; most people that go into those places carry them concealed. It's not against the law, after all, and if they don't see it they don't usually mind.

#2-MOST of the LACs that I know choose not to drink while carrying...sure, there are drunken fights that end up with someone getting shot, but that's not just here; that could happen anywhere at all and no one can say that it only happens in America. It depends on a person's state of mind, how they were raised, how they decide to treat firearms. I would never touch a gun while under the influence of anything; the same laws that protect my right to carry and use it in self-defense are VERY strict and un-forgiving when it comes to inebriated discharge of firearms.

#3-People do get shot. But most of the millions(seriously, MILLIONS)of guns in this country aren't ever used for anything but training and target shooting. It happens, and it can happen often, depending on your point of view....you have to remember that we have over 300 MILLION citizens in this country legally, and somewhere between 25-50 million illegal immigrants. That's a LOT of people to get along with and it doesn't always work out for the best, so people get hold of a gun and shoot someone in anger, in crazy, in jealousy, in whatever. But most of the millions(seriously, MILLIONS)of guns in this country aren't ever used for anything but training and target shooting...it's less than 5% of the firearms in the country that are used for crime. If 95% of the cars on the road never crashed or broke down or hurt anyone that'd be a pretty good record, right?

But you have to read between the lines, man.....the guy above quoting the Huffington Post? That's a joke of a newspaper and it panders to Americans that think celebrities are more informed/educated than other people. What you dont see a lot of are things like this:

http://www.abc15.com/dpp/news/national/ ... utah-store

That's a news story from a local outlet about a guy that is legally licensed to carry a gun, who employed it to stop another guy that walked into a grocery store and bought a knife and then started stabbing people with it. Guy with the gun saw this, pulled it IN DEFENSE OF OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES, and told him to stop or he'd shoot. The guy with the knife surrendered, and that was it. No one got shot, nothing bad happened to either man, and that's why you don't hear much about it...because nothing bad happened with the gun.

These are the stories that you DON'T see, because it's not newsworthy in the gun haters' eyes...and sadly, most people don't realize that most of the popular news agencies are beholden to advertisers, and they run what their advertisers want them to.
Sensationalist journalism is responsible for a LOT of people being afraid of firearms, when they have no reason to be.

It's completely LEGAL for me to carry a firearm outside the house and go almost anywhere in the city, and I get asked EVERY single day how can I carry a gun...I've had someone call the police on me while sitting in a coffee shop reading a book because they were unaware that I was legally allowed to do so. I spend a lot of time in public educating people about the rights that they have, because people hear news stories about how guns are bad and it never occurrs to them that they might be able to carry one...one of the reasons I open carry is so that people that don't know that can see a regular guy doing the same things that they're doing(shopping, eating, washing my truck)while carrying a gun.

One more thing, and I'll get off my soapbox and go back to lurkland.

No matter what you hear, what people say, or what some liberals believe? The only people affected by gun control laws are Law Abiding Citizens. Criminals don't care about gun laws(or laws in general for that matter)at all....an unarmed citizenry merely makes it easier for them to do their jobs.
The thing that gun control advocates don't seem to get is that making laws restricting guns doesn't affect criminals at all-just like making marijuana illegal doesn't stop people from smoking it. Drunk driving is illegal, but they don't stop car sales. Murder is completely against the law; why are people still getting murdered? Surely if there's a law against it, that piece of legislation should completely stop anyone from daring to murder anyone ever, right? See?

It's an old saying, but still a good one: All it takes for evil men to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
I consider myself a good man, and the people I know that choose to carry a gun legally to be able to defend their lives, the lives of their families and the lives of perfect strangers because it's the right thing to do are good men too.

Paul, any views on that?

[oth]

The only reason to own a gun is to kill another human.Theres other ways to defend yourself such as taking martial arts.
The batman murderer,virginia tech killer and this latest neo nazi killer, were all law abiding citizens but they all broke the law in a horrific manner.
Imagine if that movie theater was full of law abiding citizens armed with guns-i can garanty there would have been a lot more dead people.
In fact there are so few cases of of gun carriers preventing mass murders.
I have never seen a mass murder in this country committed with knives except for Norman Bates-haha.
In the least you should not be allowed to buy guns if you are psychotic or a neo nazi.Pretty logical,no?Why is it not so?As for buying guns illegally, none of these cowards ever have nor would have the balls to since they prolbably would be scared of getting busted for it-ironic,huh????

[Stiltzkin]

A person that defends psychos buying guns is really so off the charts-moronic its unimaginable but yet that is the state of mind of many here in the usa today.

the sad thing is that no matter how you angle your argument against a gun-nut,
they always point back to the 2nd amendment and the constitution claiming its their right.

now, I get the point of having a firearm in your house for protections against burglars and other criminals.
It's self-defense. I'm fine with that. I get that people use guns for hunting, hell, even here, in the cold north, people
attend annual moose/deer hunting.

but when people start to carry in the open, not because there's any direct threat, only because they can...
then, there's something CONSTITUTIONALLY wrong.

[Paul Wolfe]

Here are the numbers on the gun control issue according to CNN.

310,000,000 nonmilitary guns in the States as of 2009. As of 2011 the population of the States was 311,591,917.

[rice_pudding]

Did anyone hear about the guy who ordered a TV from Amazon and got an assault rifle instead?

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/0 ... ault-rifle

The weapon in question is a SIG716 rifle; http://www.sigsauer.com/CatalogProductD ... rifle.aspx

Notice that it is a semi automatic rifle with a 20 round magazine chambered to fire 7.62 X 51 mm NATO rounds. That is military grade ammunition commonly used in sniper rifles. It's arguably more lethal than the weapons used by regular US infantrymen. You can even order a scope and tripod for it. You got shit like that floating around and wonder why you have problems. Why the hell should any citizen ever be able to own that in the first place???

the SIG716 is the rifle of choice when you require the power of a larger caliber carbine.

Where is the justification for that? Defending your household at a range of 400m? Hunting, elephants?

Rob

[rice_pudding]

Another quote from SIG. This one made me laugh

The SSG 3000 Tactical rifle is the ultimate high-performance long range rifle, ideal for situations where your first shot may be your only shot.

I'm not sure if they are implying a situation where you are hunting animals or firing at people. I'm not sure what would be more ridiculous all things considered.

Rob

[The_Scratch]

Listening to Americans in this debate is a lesson in futility.

It's mindboggling.

Alas if I lived in the U.S I would have to buy a gun, logic dictates that in a country with enough non military firearms in circulation to arm the entire country (including every child) I would be an idiot to not arm myself... because at some point the odds are that I will have to defend myself against someone with a gun.

But here in Canada there are 17 million guns in circulation, 1 for every 2 people.
I don't lock my doors at night.
I go for walks at 2 AM in the downtown core of our largest city with impunity, never had a problem from someone who wasn't drunk.
I have never discharged a firearm in my life... and I'm pretty proud of that.
With the exception of the first two years of my life I have lived wholly in Canada.
I have never seen a gun in public.
EVER!!!
Thats 14845 days outside the United States that I have never encountered a firearm.

I have visited the United states 23 times in my life (That doesn't include jaunts across the border to see your side of Niagara Falls), if I was to add up the days that is a grand total of about 120 days.
I have a gun pointed in my face twice.
I have guns offered to me for sale 3 times.
5 seperate occassions out of 120.

Seriously.
Your country has a gun problem.