Iâve got a lot of conjecture and hearsay those are kinds of evidence.
Was it Rod Liddle?
We arenât talking about your economic theories here.
Of course we arenât my theories are based on sound economics, that shite you posted up is pure drivel without even so much as an attempt to back up his arguments with any kind of fact.
Youâre a Fianna Fail supporter. I donât really need to say any more, do I?
Sound economics? :lol:
Obamaâs speech last night certainly seemed an indicator towards a genuine move for gun control. I think the location of this shooting on the east coast and the age profile of the victims might just be enough to bring about real change but they need to be decisive here and avoid a half-arsed effort to tweak the laws. It will require a huge cultural and mindset shift to actually alter anything though. While there are obviously social and mental health aspects of this case that require addressing too I think itâs probably far easier for an unhinged person to shoot 26 people dead than to stab them. If they donât reform the gun laws these cases will keep on coming.
Decent piece from Charlie Brooker in the Guardian today - havenât seen any non humorous articles from him before:
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I was a country boy. When I was growing up, there was a shotgun in the house. Dad shot clay pigeons for sport. I fired it once myself, with his assistance. Had to wear ear protectors. When you pull the trigger, a shotgun punches you hard in the shoulder. It almost knocked me over.[/font]
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Decades later I fired a handgun at a shooting range in Las Vegas. At first I didnât even want to hold it. It represented a level of fearsome responsibility I didnât want to bear for even a few minutes. Once in your hand, a gun seems heavier and somehow more real than you anticipated. You face the target (in this case, a fullsize photocopy of Osama bin Laden). Pull the trigger and your hand kicks upwards, the blast 20 times louder than the imaginary one you had been mentally preparing yourself for. Adrenaline sears through you. You tingle. Itâs exciting. Once youâve fired a gun, itâs easier to understand people who donât want to give theirs up.[/font]
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And the US is not Britain. There are places where you can drive in one direction for several hours without seeing a soul. On honeymoon, I recall looking out of the car window, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and seeing a tiny house all on its own. If I lived there alone, I figured, Iâd want a gun.[/font]
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Anyway. None of those feelings, real as they are, are anywhere near as potent as the sensation I had this weekend.[/font]
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The last time Iâd experienced something similar was in November, looking at pictures of a BBC video editor clutching the body of his son, killed during a rocket attack on Gaza. I mention this backdrop not to make any political point. It was a story that hit me, and hit me hard. The manâs son was still a baby.[/font]
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âWhat did my son do to die like this?â the man said. âWhat was his mistake? He is 11 months old. What did he do?â[/font]
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There was a photo of the boy when he was alive. Wide brown eyes. Smiling. He looked like my own son. So much like my own son. It built inside me, a wave of nausea and dread, and I couldnât stand it. I shut the webpage. There was nothing I could do. I was helpless. It hurt.[/font]
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Now itâs December. Newtown. Twenty-six bodies, and what can you say? Again, some stories hit you so hard that after the initial mesmerising horror, your secondary instinct is to protect yourself, to shut the mind down, halt the imagination before it conjures the details that lurk between the brisk lines of the news reports. The sights, the sounds, the terror, the grief. I simply cannot bear to place myself in the shoes of those parents. To be racing for the school, feeling unreal, light, weightless, powered by gut fear alone. To stand and wait, and wait, and wait. To hear your child is dead.[/font]
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I donât have it in me.[/font]
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The news displays the faces of the children and I have to look away. That feeling, still relatively new to me, becomes overwhelming. The basic parental urge to protect. They are other peopleâs children. Faces in photographs. Gone now. But still: the urge to protect. And I canât. Iâm helpless. It hurts.[/font]
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Not so long ago when other people wrote words like that I would roll my eyes at their soppy bullshit. Their gauche sentiment. I miss reacting like that. I knew nothing; I was an idiot with nothing at stake. But still. I miss the warmth of that bubble, the cosiness of that protective sneer. Itâs cold outside.[/font]
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Over the past few days a fair few people have retweeted an excerpt from a show I made in 2009 in which a psychologist urged news organisations not to sensationalise their coverage of massacres[/url], on the basis that this had the potential to inspire further tragedies. That may well be true, and thereâs no harm pursuing it. But the best way to improve media coverage of massacres is to prevent massacres. And try as I might, I canât think of a better way to prevent massacres than [url=âhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/17/obama-newtown-speech-gun-controlâ]reducing the number of guns in circulation.[/font]
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Twenty children shot at close range with an assault rifle. You could argue that the choice of weapon is irrelevant; that a truly unhinged individual would still find the means to kill. Maybe thatâs true; I donât know. All I know is that 20 children were shot at close range with an assault rifle, and that only a lunatic nation wouldnât try everything it could think of to make that less likely to happen again.[/font]
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America, donât be helpless. Look at the faces. Feel how much it hurts. Try to stop it happening again.
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Am I?
Ah, youâre confused. Same as ever.
Guns are not used millions of times each year in self-defense
[font=Verdana][size=3]We use epidemiological theory to explain why the âfalse positiveâ problem for rare events can lead to large overestimates of the incidence of rare diseases or rare phenomena such as self-defense gun use. We then try to validate the claims of many millions of annual self-defense uses against available evidence. We find that the claim of many millions of annual self-defense gun uses by American citizens is invalid. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana][size=3]Most purported self-defense gun uses are gun uses in escalating arguments and are both socially undesirable[/size][/font]and illegal[font=Verdana][size=3] [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana][size=3]We analyzed data from two national random-digit-dial surveys conducted under the auspices of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. [/size][/font]Criminal court judges who read the self-reported accounts of the purported self-defense gun use rated a majority as being illegal[font=Verdana][size=3], even assuming that the respondent had a permit to own and to carry a gun, and that the respondent had described the event honestly from his own perspective.[/size][/font]
Guns in the home are used more often to intimidate intimates than to thwart crime.
[font=Verdana][size=3]Using data from a national random-digit-dial telephone survey conducted under the direction of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, we investigated how and when guns are used in the home. We found that guns in the home are used more often to frighten intimates than to thwart crime; other weapons are far more commonly used against intruders than are guns.[/size][/font]
[font=Verdana][size=3]Criminals who are shot are typically the victims of crime[/size][/font]
[font=Verdana][size=3]Using data from a survey of detainees in a Washington D.C. jail, we worked with a prison physician to investigate the circumstances of gunshot wounds to these criminals. [/size][/font]
[font=Verdana][size=3]We found that one in four of these detainees had been wounded, in events that appear unrelated to their incarceration. Most were shot when they were victims of robberies, assaults and crossfires. [/size][/font]Virtually none report being wounded by a âlaw-abiding citizen.â
Few criminals are shot by decent law abiding citizens
[font=Verdana][size=3]Using data from surveys of detainees in six jails from around the nation, we worked with a prison physician to determine whether criminals seek hospital medical care when they are shot. Criminals almost always go to the hospital when they are shot. To believe fully the claims of millions of self-defense gun uses each year would mean believing that decent law-abiding citizens shot hundreds of thousands of criminals. But the data from emergency departments belie this claim, unless hundreds of thousands of wounded criminals are afraid to seek medical care. But virtually all criminals who have been shot went to the hospital, and can describe in detail what happened there.[/size][/font]
Iâm wondering where you got the idea I was FF from? I certainly wasnât aware I was.
Probably from the time you called Brian Lenihan a national hero. Thatâs a bit of a giveaway.
Iâm pretty sure heâs not a member of FF anymore.
I liked Lenihan I thought he was at last trying to face up to the problems and he seemed genuine enough. Iâve never expressed anything but contempt for the rest of FF.
For what itâs worth I voted FG in the last election, not that Iâll be doing that again. Iâve never voted FF.
FF were involved in the Connecticut shootings :strokechin:
longwinded postsâŚaka boring posts
Morgan Freeman didnât write that. It was a rather strange hoax.
Apparently only something like 30% of America is for gun control, so I canât see anything changing. Politicians are almost completely against increased gun control.
Must be horrific having a child that is basically incapable of empathy. I canât imagine there is anything that can change that illness either.
[quote=âTurenne, post: 729361â]
Must be horrific having a child that is basically incapable of empathy. I canât imagine there is anything that can change that illness either.[/quote]
No. it is a life sentence for the whole family.
Christ thatâs fairly heartbreaking.