The recent school shootings in CANADA has taught us that . . .

Obviously, Canada needs restrictive gun laws to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Oh, wait a sec...they already have those. I guess they need to have the state enact a different law to make them safe.

**hillbilly: I resent the implication that Canadians are somehow "behind" Americans. After all, Mark Lepine had a higher body count than Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold put together.

I didn't know there were school shootings in CANADA.

what school shootings in Canada? help me out here, I'm not very news-attentive.

Spiteful much? So where are options like "this sort of thing can happen anywhere -- even in places with relatively sane attitudes towards firearms", and "Nothing, since it was the first such incident in 20 years in Canada, while the States has one every few months"?

Bear in mind that this incident happened in Alberta. Anyone who's actually done any research into Canadian gun control (a subject about which I wrote a paper while a grad student) would know that attitudes towards guns and gun control in that part of Canada resemble American ones more than they do the rest of the country.

But thank you for using the death of a student to snipe at my country. It's big of you.

**cpierson: Where was your righteous indignation when North79 made survey after survey sniping at the US on this very subject? What's good for the yank is good for the canuck (and in equally poor taste either way). Your "20 years" comment is grossly inaccurate (it's been less than ten years since the deadliest school shooting in either Canada or the US, which happened to occur in Canada, never mind more typical shootings in which only one or two die). As someone who's done graduate level research into the subject, I'm sure you knew that.

I think this incident, along with the other copycat plots and attempted efforts throughout the US, show the real effects of the media.

Incidentally, AP just reported that a student opened fire at the Gloucestershire College of Art and Technology in England. The gunman fled without causing any injuries and the local police think they have him in custody. This is AP, so take it with a grain of salt.
One of the Chicago newspapers (I think it was the Tribune) refused to give the Littleton shooting front page coverage. I think that was a good idea. (Hmmm...maybe that should be a survey.)

**daver: So because North79 makes sniping surveys, that justifies the aptly-named hillbilly's attempts to do the same? Not exactly taking the high road, is it? And frankly, it's not my job to defend your country and countrymen. That's what you Yanks are for. But if hillbilly starts making sniping comments about Canada under the guise of conducting a survey, damn right I'm going to call him a self-righteous prick.

Also, the 20-years comment _is_ accurate; I just wasn't as clear as I should have been about its context. I'm talking about high-school shootings -- Marc Lepine committed his reprehensible act at a university. This is an important distinction, as Lepine was -- technically speaking, at least -- an adult, instead of a 14-year-old kid like the one in Alberta. If you want to drag mass murders (or attempted mass murders) by adults into this discussion, there are countless American post offices, bell towers, fast food restaurants, and the like that would have to come into it as well. And, of course, the death in Alberta still leaves Canada's per-capita deaths-by-guns rate way lower than the one in the States, so I don't really see how it disproves the notion that gun control reduces gun violence. No one's saying gun control _eliminates_ gun violence, incidentally; it does, however, appear to make it (and accidental handgun deaths, and possibly -- the statistics aren't as clear -- handgun suicides) rather less common than they are in the States.

**Pooh_Bear: That's been a concern of mine about the Littleton incident from the start. Roger Ebert, of all people, wrote a very good column over the weekend about how the news, particularly TV news, is pretty much encouraging kids to try and break the Littleton record by giving it so much prominent play. Hell, this week's Newsweek included big glossy, glamorous photos of the two twisted little f*cks who did the killing, like they were models or something. It puts a really bad taste in my mouth, especially since I have a journalism degree, to see the media more or less _daring_ American (and yes, Canadian) youth to play can-you-top-this.

Anyway, I'm going to have to bow out of this argument now, as I'm leaving this afternoon for -- of all places -- Denver, and I really should try and get some work done before then.

daver: God bless you (if you're not an atheist, like most Canadians are).

None of the above.

Group hug.

Uh, a little more background on the Canadian shooting incidents, better options, and less attitude would have helped this survey tremendously...

This survey is biased. In my opinion, at least.

Aw, I wanted to do this one!

Gun Control Debate Central

What shootings in Canada?

It tells us a lot of things: (1) Canada is in fact very similar to the US culturally (2) Canadians, generally speaking DO want to be just like Americans..but they really have no choice, since it is in their face all day, every day, from the day they are born (3) That Canada is not Utopia (which no one ever claimed anyways)

On a more serious note, I figured it was only a matter of time until this occurred. The difference is this was once, wheras in the US it has happened several times. If it keeps happening, then the gun advocates have a case. But don't hold your breath.

Also, I can't speak for Alberta since it is radically different from my home province of Ontario. The attitude towards firearms is more on par with the United States the further west you go across the country. I am also not sure as to whether laws prohibiting firearms
are completely under the jurisdiction of the federal government or if there is some provincial control.

I've just read all of the above comments and I can honestly say I've never been more offended in my life. I lost a great deal of respect for a couple people today. But you know what? Its good because I'm going to take the low road myself.

It's really too bad its going to take another hundred episodes of psychotic loners geared up with enough firepower to wage war to bust into some great-American-dream suburb under a blue sky and slaughter another dozen innocent kids until every backwater yankee hick wakes up and sees the blood on his hands. But you know what? I've stopped caring, because all the logic in the world falls on deaf ears. And there is no doubt in my mind it will ultimately be the United States undoing.

Perhaps my 'sniping' has really hit a nerve with all you Rambo types.
Or maybe its the fact that, God forbid, the United States has got this one thing just totally fudgeed up. Not that anyone would ever, ever admit it. Get off your ass-backwards ways, this is 1999, not 1800. You want a society where you have your precious right to bear arms, then stop gasping every time a kid blows his or someone else's head off. Because after all, it makes for a safer society. Yeah, sure. You may as well sell fudging grenades down at the 7-11.

I really have to agree with North79. I don't get the 'guns are good' mentality.

You know, if you really want to get gun control legislation enacted then you should start shooting politicians. Jim Brady has been more instrumental in the institution of firearm control than all of the thousands of people who die from firearms every year. All he did was get shot...oh, to be a Washington Insider...

One statistic that anti-gun-control advocates cannot refute is that there are no shootings that are performed by people without guns in their possession. None.

Second, sociological statistics are difficult to interpret because real events in complex systems do not follow smooth linear trends. The nature of chaos theory dictates isolated mass murders in countries with strict gun laws. This does not mean that gun control does not reduce gun crime any more than the existence of one bad ball bearing means there is rotten quality control at the ball-bearing factory...

I have a hard time with the "guns are good" mentality, too, but here's the argument that I think is at the heart of it. Hopefully I'm not too tired to get this right. The issue is similar to the Freedom of Speech issue, only this time it's The Right To Bear Arms issue. I believe it's an equalizer between the government and the individual. The individual has the right to bear arms, which may be used to defend the individual against other individuals, or against a hostile government. In the latter case, it's sorted out later who was in the right - of course that's usually the winner. The US originated from a rebellion against the British government and I believe that some of the ideals of that rebellion were encoded in the constitution to try to avoid a civilian populace who would be unable to stand up against a hostile government that needed to be rebelled against.

That said, any attempt to restrict the right to bear arms by the individual translates into an attempt to disempower the populace, which is unacceptable.

That also said, I'm no constitutional scholar; that's just my interpretation of "guns are good".

This is the "guns are good" argument that sways me:

Most citizens are good people. They have no intention of shooting someone else and will in fact never do so. Most gun owners are regular citizens. They are not raving lunatics, they are not emotionally unstable. Most are responsible and have been trained to handle their gun.

Laws that take away the guns from those responsible people only serve to strip away what little defense our society has against the criminals that exist within it.

The real problem is that there are people in our society who are choosing to kill or assault others in our society. Trying to make it harder for them to kill by taking away guns doesn't solve that problem.

Finding ways to correct poverty and social injustice is the solution, but that's hard and may involve us changing ourselves or the way we think.

Here's a more specific, though theoretical, example:
If our society motivated more people to carry guns and know how to use them how would the Colorado shooting have gone down? Well, as soon as those 2 killers had pulled a gun out, so would some of the responsible gun owners in the vicinity. The killers would have been stopped earlier and less victims would have been killed by them. Furthermore, if they knew there were people around them who also carried guns, they probably wouldn't have even made their plan in the first place.

My only personal issue with this argument is that I don't want to carry a gun.

When we talk about banning guns what we are saying is "I don't trust other people". It is very similar drug laws. The ban doesn't fix the problem, it just attempts to correct a symptom of it. I think deep down we all know this. Laws that take away our freedom in order to address a side-effect of poverty and injustive are sad things.

Handle, that was a pretty nasty crack about Jim Brady. The guy got messed up for life taking a shot meant for someone else and your belittlement of his devasting injuries doesn't become you.

hunter: I think the comment about Jim Brady was meant to draw attention to the fact that thousands of John Smiths could be killed little action taking place but it only took one Jim Brady (friend of Presidents). It's a sad thing that thousands of common men and women don't rate as high as one Jim Brady. I feel sorry for the man but I don't feel any more sorry for him than I do any other person who has been injured by a homicidal maniac. John Smith wouldn't get much attention in national news, but Jim Brady does. If he hadn't been a Washington insider he would have been another John Smith. What does that say about our society?

Sure, it's the "poster child" phenomenon. Same thing is happening with Christopher Reeves and spinal injury and "all he did" was fall off a horse. As a society, we have a *lot* of things to pay attention to and most of them, we don't. We do, however, pay a lot of attention to celebrities, so combining a personality with an issue is an effective way of focusing public attention. That doesn't make the issue any less deserving of attention or the terrible things that happen to people any less terrible. Most people aren't rational without effort and it requires a fair amount of hoopla to make something worthy of effort.

I wonder what Jim Brady's stance on gun control was before he was shot?
Does anyone know?

Twister---He was a friend of President Reagan...I think that would be a pretty fair indication.

Hunter--I didn't intend to belittle the suffering of Jim Brady. I feel generally sorry for him and only wish that somehow Hinckley found it difficult to get his hands on a gun.

Bill--Most (nearly all) policemen are decent people who have respect for the law and a desire to serve society...why else would they take such a crappy job. Despite all of their training and expertise they manage to shoot and kill some innocent people every year. Such accidents are inevitible just as car accidents are inevitable. (I am not referring to the NYPD doing a Sam Peckinpah on an innocent immigrant, I am talking about sincere mistakes, stray rounds, and honest lapses of judgement.) Do you honestly think that things would be made SAFER by the presence of 200 million armed, untrained and unregulated self-appointed peace officers. I personally have fired 9mm pistol rounds through car doors, aluminum engine blocks, cinder blocks, two by fours and numerous other junk on my friends' grandfathers' farm, the bullets keep going on the other side of the target. (Or worse they ricochet...) The collateral damage from all those gun-toting maniacs in your alternate Littleton would result in a worse blood-bath than occurred. One of the first things police are taught, and IMO the most important, is when NOT to shoot.

Romkey--The ownership of personal weapons is not any assurance against the government. I would think that Waco and Ruby Ridge would illustrate that. The only real protection that we have from the state is the assurance that it will follow the law of the land. The only assurance that we have of that is to actually elect people we can trust to keep their eye on it. Having guns doesn't make us any safer from oppression. It is only the social contract that protects us.

In my personal experience and observation, most police are *not* decent people who have respect for the law, they are dull, conventional people who have a desire to pretend they are important and to control people. I also don't know how "crappy" their jobs are, they get paid pretty well and seem to have a lot of time to spend hanging out at the 7-11 eating donuts, at least in my community. I'd bet that the average citizen would be much more responsible with a gun than the average police officer is.

Handle - I agree, owning weapons is no assurance against the government. However, I think many people feel it's the only little bit of protection they may have.

romkey---Granted.

EB---Have you ever been on a police ride-along? I would recommend that anyone who wants to dog about law-enforcement officers should make the effort to walk a mile in their shoes. Furthermore, I would hope that police officers were paid well; they do a critical, stressful job under less than ideal conditions. Police officers may be shot or assaulted any day they go into work, can you say the same?

EB--Furthermore I don't see how your comment invalidates my point. Which is that having 200 million untrained, unregulated, self-appointed peace officers would make things less safe and not more safe. People who are on here would presumably all be armed under Bill's proposal. I freely acknowledge that police officers sometimes make poor decisions. However, I think that police officers generally make better decisions under the same circumstances than most people would simply because they have experience and training.

Handle: quite frankly I don't even know what your point was. I haven't been following this blatherfest in its entirety and don't really care much about the thread of whether we should ban guns or not. As for your defense of cops: Why yes, I can say that I can be assaulted any day I go to work (and have been). But that has nothing to do with the fact that in my experience, most cops are not people I like or trust. If I agree to go on a "ride-along," will you agree to accompany my friend Angelo (who's black and lives in New York City) for a day, as he minds his own business, yet is continually hassled by cops?

I don't want to write another essay-length comment, but I just think it would be spooky to live in a place where everybody had a gun on them, all the time. That's a tremendous amount of stress you're tacking onto people.

I have a hard time with the disempowering argument too. There are a myriad of things which people are prohibited from possessing or doing. Why are firearms such a big deal then? Just one more thing on the list.

And finally, about romkey's point of equalizer between the government and the individual, the fact that the USA was born out of rebellion is probably reflected in that fear of the potential of an oppressive state (ergo the 'checks and balances' system of government). Again, as with my point about everyone being armed, I'd find it scary to live in a place where the system of government is actually organized out of a fear that it may not function as intended! Talk about planning for the worst..

Anyways, I'll be back next weekend to rant more.

North79 - yeah actually I think when you consider where the USA came from, people rebelling against their government, people persecuted for various reasons, run out of their countries, outcast, it's not too difficult to see that reflected in other areas of US society. I'm not, by the way, saying it was bad that the founders rebelled against the Brits, just saying that there are some distant echoes.

EB--- I don't know where you work or what you do so I won't attempt to compare the relative hazards of your job with the hazards of a police officers job. I would hope, however, that if your job is as hazardous as a police officers' that your compensation would reflect that level of risk. I think it is unlikely, however, that your job requires you to confront, arrest or apprehend armed criminals.

You are entitled to your opinion of police officers. That they are dull conventional people whom you neither like nor trust. You are also entitled to say that they are not decent people, they lack a respect for the law and to say that they are self-important and abuse their power. I would not dream of curtailing your right of free-expression and I am glad we live in a society where you can say such things and not fear for your freedom, safety or life. I wonder, however, whether this opinion is based on fact or is merely the result of your own prejudices.

Considering your antipathy for the police I wonder, also, if you could suggest some alternatives. Would the police, for example, do a better job if we were to replace all of the current officers with different people? Presumably you think that there is some pool of people who are not dull and conventional. Some pool of people who you like and trust and who are decent and respect the law. Presumably these people could serve as law officers. What, then, is preventing these people from doing this important job? Presumably, also, you would include yourself in this pool of qualified people. What prevents you from doing the job and thus making a change in what you consider to be a deplorable system? Could it be that law-enforcement is, in fact a hard, crappy job that most people don't want to do?

Your hostility towards constructive means of participating in community policing such as ride-alongs, and presumably also community advisory panels and citizen review boards, causes me to wonder how deeply you disapprove of the current system if you are unwilling to act to change it. Admittedly I am presuming a lot over what may be simple hostility directed towards me, but what I have written is at least plausible based on the virulence of your post.

**Handle: (Damn, I need an HTML tag for engaging broken record mode) Generally speaking, private citizens do a far better job of not misusing their firearms than the police. Take a look at the data collected by the Dade county police on offenses committed by handgun licensees. Remember that the police started collecting the data with the avowed purpose of showing how dangerous it is to have an armed populace. You can also look at ratio of proper to improper use of firearms for police vs. private citizens. Again, keep in mind that the police play a large part in the initial investigations in both cases so if there is any bias in the data it should tend to favor the police.
Lastly, law-enforcement, like politics, grants individuals with increased power. Certain people will seek those jobs because of, rather than despite, the increased power. If those are the only people constituting your police force (or your legislature), you'll have a problem.

Handle: gee, can I have some of whatever it is you're taking? No virulence or hostility, I am just mistrustful of cops, based on past experience. And no, I do not intend to do anything about problem cops. There are enough problems in the world that each person cannot possibly hope to work on all of them.

North79: Would you feel better if everyone was walking around with steak knifes?

Everyone: With all this wonderful dialog you would think that I would have gotten better than a 33% rating.

The thing is taught me is that Americans like me are spectacularly self-centered. There have been shootings in Canadian schools?

Hillbilly: Maybe all this 'wonderful dialogue' deserves a good rating, but the 'wonderful dialog' didn't start until they got off your awful topic. Of course, you can call it 'wonderful dialog' if you like; seems to me that like most gun-control debates it has devolved into a series of unattended monologues.

Hillbilly=Brian??

guns good-guns bad...this has already been done in a "bill" survey months ago

I've always thought hillbilly is an alter ego of bill. Hill BILL y?

I've yet to create an alter-ego, though I'd like to and think it would be cool. I just don't have the time...
I do make snide anonymous comments in times of weakness though...

I didn't even know there were school shootings in Canada.