Clearly the six year old should have had a gun also. That way it wouldn't have happened.

I will never understand how or why Muricans support gun ownership when things like this happen on what seems like a daily basis.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Journalists shot dead live on on air in Virginia

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-34062118

[edit] Disgruntled former employee of the TV station, apparently.

Just waiting for the NRA response, probably something like "if the camera man was shooting bullets instead of video, they'd still be alive", or something equally moronic.

It's got to the point now where you think 'that's a strange one even for America'

Virginia shooting: Ricky Gervais slams US gun laws after two journalists are killed in live broadcast - People - News - The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/peopl ... icn=puff-1

Yet Another

Just watched live coverage of President Obama's speech in response. I genuinely think it's one of the best political speeches I've ever seen. Sincere, impassioned, reasoned arguments.. and it will make not one jot of difference at all. He's plainly utterly exasperated and utterly frustrated. I suspect if he could have got away with it he'd have just stood up and shouted "ARE YOU ALL [LIFTED] STUPID? LOOK AT WHAT WE ARE DOING TO EACH OTHER! IF YOU THINK WE'RE DOING IT RIGHT YOU'RE A [LIFTED] MORON!"

Part of me really has started not to care about this any more. It’s America. That’s what they do. It’s an almost cultural thing; certainly a side effect of the gun culture that runs deeply through that nation’s psyche.

The sheriff in Oregon where the recent shooting took place isn’t a fan of gun control.


http://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/02/us/or ... index.html

His letter is doing the rounds today.
Click for large view - Uploaded with Skitch

Hmmm, if only there was a way to, oh I don't know, amend the constitution of the United States.

I saw Bonnie Greer talking about on the Victoria Derbyshire programme this this morning. It was interesting, as she gave a few reasons that people in the USA like guns.

The first one is safety in the home - they are scared of the intruder bursting in, and they want to be able to protect themselves. Guns, obviously.

The second is that the USA is a nation fleeing from oppression and tyranny. The original settlers fled this country from tyranny, the war of independence was about losing the tyranny of the King, the war of independence was again partly about losing control of guns, and there have been other events which have just enforced this idea that they will lose control. It sounds like a perpetual state of paranoia to me, but that seems to be how it is.

They also believe that the Constitution and the Second Amendment are a direct message from God. I doubt they all believe that, but clearly there is a vocal number who do.

In short, Greer said that any form of gun control will never happen in her opinion. The second amendment has been massaged so many times that there is no room for manoeuvre, and it’s likely that opposition to any attempt at changing that amendment will make it impossible to achieve. Worth catching on iPlayer if you can.

Yup, it's total cobblers. Almost all of the people who own the guns were born and have lived every second of their lives inside the United States, 'The Free-est country on Earth'. Also, if you have lots and lots of guns in circulation the man climbing in the window is much more likely to have a gun themselves, so you're at much greater risk. The bare fact is in the US, you're more likely to be shot with your own gun than anyone else's.

You can see it in the reaction though - the perennial call after a mass shooting is not 'well, maybe we should stop the crazy people having guns' it's 'well, if everybody else had guns, the crazy person would only be able to shoot one other person before someone shot them!'

In this particular aspect, the US is literally the stupidest country in the world.


Anyone who believes that any document where there is a historical record of some person writing it is somehow a 'message from God' should not be allowed within the same postcode as a firearm. If it showed up miraculously on the oval office desk in the middle of a press briefing, fair enough.

So, I've been drawn into a conversation on an American friends Facebook page that can be more or less summed as "WTF - why so many guns?" "Because second amendment, you wouldn't understand".
It's like showing a dog magic tricks.

NSFW, but just about covers the issue nicely.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=89d_1411198955

Two statistics I saw this morning

1) 3,000 American citizens have been killed by terrorists in the last decade. In the same period, 115,000 American citizens have been killed within the US as a consequence of gun crime and gun related accidents.

2) The longest period of 2015 the USA has managed to go without a gun massacre is eight days.

Trump: mass-shooting gunmen are 'sick as hell and geniuses in a certain way' | US news | The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015 ... n-geniuses

Issue sorted.

Have you seen the Nerf advert? Apparently, you can buy gun parts in modules, clip them together to make sniper guns, assault weapons, compact machine guns, etc. and run around shooting your friends with them. With impunity.

I fired a Nerf hand gun the other day. You cock it, and when you pull, the trigger you get a real bit of recoil. The thing kicks. This, I thought as I stood holding it in my local branch of The Entertainer, is a truly educational toy.

I've got the 'sawn-off' - you can't actually fire it at anyone really, not without risking hurting them head-wise.