Shooting in middle of Chicago earlier this year, stopped by an armed Uber driver.
Willoughby Chase
Yeah, a couple of armed goons stopped by civilians. So worth the deaths of children at Sandyhook.
Michael
And just this month in Michigan, a legal carrier decided that a fleeing shoplifter was worth pulling out her firearm in a busy parking lot. She failed to shoot out the tires as she had intended, so thank whatever deity you believe in that there wasn’t any collateral damage. This “everyone is a hero if only they’re armed” mentality is DANGEROUS.
I’ve seen that, but the one where wheelchair guy stops a robbery is even cooler. That’s the toughest mofo in his town. I’d hate to run into him in a dark alley. With his upper body strength, he could probably run me down and pummel me to death. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rFEx-mkXn8
I’m impressed by that man’s courage, and glad he didn’t get stabbed in the process of the grab. If that robber had a gun instead of a knife it could’ve gone much worse. 🙁
MrSpkr
That’s my home town. I know the dude. Stupid robber; had it been most anyone else around here, he would’ve been shot.
MrSpkr
Midlothian, that is. The Texas firefighter.
Kryss LaBryn
There was a robbery at the 7/11 in a small BC town just before we moved there. Only hold-up the place has ever had.
They cooperated and gave him what he wanted and as soon as he left the first call was to his mum.
Pro tip: If you’re gonna rob a convenience store, maybe don’t do it in the small town of 2000 people you grew up in, where everyone knows everyone else, and they know you. 😀
I can only think of one. There was an Uber driver in Chicago earlier this year who shot a man who was firing into a crowd of people near Logan Square.
Wasted
Appalachian School of Law shooting. Gunman taken down by armed students in 2002.
Also the mall shooting either last year or so where the shooter didn’t fire, but the threat of an armed civilian was enough to make the shooter go hide and kill himself.
There are plenty of other cases where armed civilians stop shootings before they become “mass”. Unfortunately, because they’re not “mass”, anti-gunners use this as an excuse to dismiss legitimate cases of self-defense shootings.
Wasted
RE: mall shooting – I mean, where the armed civilian didn’t fire. The shooter had opened fire, but the armed civilian was enough for the guy to give up and kill himself.
Willoughby Chase
SO, those killings of adults by children … what is it? One a week now?
Nice open air asylum you got going. Hope you enjoy it.
PDV
Fun fact: Scotland has a significantly higher per capita rate of death by mass shooting than the US. Second fun fact: In the last 20 years, Scotland has had only one mass shooting (1997, 17 dead). The USA is so goddamned huge that we have a lot of everything.
(Also, since pre-1800, we’ve had elevated levels of murder relative to the rest of the Anglosphere. No one knows why, but it can’t be a matter of policy, because no policy has stayed constant over that period.)
Hotsauce
My I’ve often wondered if it’s related to a rapid increase in population density. We went from “I have all kinds of space and don’t have to deal with anyone I don’t want to,” to “I’m less than 100 yards from other people all the time but still want to act like I don’t have to deal with them.”
I could be wrong.
LordofthePotatoes
If that were the case there’d be a spree a week in London.
Turkey
A quick google of shooting spree rates didn’t show Scotland at all. I instead saw Norway, Finland and Switzerland, as those are all low population countries with isolated incidents in the period(s) being examined.
To make a fairer comparison, you would need to examine a period large enough for a statistically meaningful number of incidents in each country (which makes trends hard to spot), or examine only countries (or collections of countries) with a statistically meaningful number of incidents in the period.
LiamKav
Yeah, that fact about Scotland doesn’t seem true at all. I’ve tried to look but I can only find facts about either England or the UK as a whole, so I’m going to have to do a “citiation needed” here.
Also, I question your argument based on those statistics. You are saying that Scotland has a higher number of people killed in a mass shooting than the US per capita, even though they’ve only had one shooting in the past 19 years (Dunblane was 1996, not 1997). As a single example makes for poor statistical analysis, the fact that Scotland has only had one compared to the US’s many would seem to agree with the overall statement that you have a much higher chance of being killed in a shooting spree in the US than in Scotland.
Crumplepunch
I live in Scotland. You know what we did after that mass shooting (1996, by the way)? We heavily increased regulation on firearms, especially handguns. No more mass shootings!
bearpelt
Alright, I agree with you on the gun control topic, but was it really necessary with the intense amount of ableism you displayed in your comment? Asylums were and are inherently abusive places where disabled people like me are often forced to stay against their will and have no autonomy or way out. Using something that serious as an insult is incredibly offensive. Please stop trying to insult people by comparing them to disabled people.
anna
As a disabled person, please don’t speak for me. It’s insulting to assert that all people who fit into a certain category think and feel and judge things exactly the same. Thanks.
bearpelt
Wow, assuming I’m not disabled either?
TheEighthShader
As a person on the interweb, he is entitled to say whatever the bloody hell he wants to, I can overuse “bloody” and people can be offensive, And theres nothing you can do to stop them, unless you have something meaningful to add to the nonsense, dont try to throw yourself a pity party, and invite everyone else.
random832
Inherently abusive, or abusive in implementation?
But, no, let’s just close them all and let those who can’t support themselves live on the streets, because reforming is hard.
LiamKav
The term itself is outdated. If the comment had been about psychiatric hospitals, I can kinda how you’d get upset, but “asylum” usually refers to a historical “insane asylum” of the type you’d find the Joker and Two-Face in, and is pretty far removed from anything that you’d find today that it makes to pretty obvious the original comment is just engaging in (humorous) hyperbole.
SDGlyph
I thought it was pretty well established that armed civilians do NOT successfully intervene in the great majority of cases. I don’t have the stats to hand, but of course they came out again in the last couple of weeks.
And that’s not considering the number of accidents or non-public individual homicides, or the fact that lower availability of guns is directly and reliably correlated with lower gun death stats.
Mindlink
Just because it works in some cases, doesn’t make it any less crazy or reduce the inherent risks of escalating the situation badly.
There is no reason to NOT be anti-gun, none, if the only good a gun can do is stop others with guns, cause without guns there’d be no other people with guns to stop in the first place. You don’t need a gun to do hunting, we didn’t need guns to hunt before.
SzL
I hate to be a devil’s advocate, but if you live in a place with polar bears you’re gonna want a gun. I realise that isn’t America, but there are almost always counterexamples, even if they’re tiny.
Mindlink
Yeah, I’m from Norway, so I know that on Svalbard you are not even allowed to venture outside of the town borders without a gun, but people lived before guns became usefull against polar bears too, so…
Willoughby Chase
European countries and the US are so far apart culturally and politically on this issue, there no useful comparisons.
Watch Bowling for Columbine. At core, the US problem is down to racism. White people fear coloureds and to “protect” themselves, they arm themselves.
This is in particular after the Civil Rights movements of the 60s came into being. Suddenly, Jim Crow laws were thrown out, the Services were integrated, and the riots and Johnson’s Great Society came into being.
It’s during the 70s that the NRA started ramping up, the GOP began it’s Southern Strategy and the Religious right rose to power culminating in the current GOP bifurcated amongst moderates and Tea Party idiots, all them who seem to advocate less gun control.
Since then every time guns cause damage in the US, the answer is yet more fucking guns, yet more lax gun laws, and nobody checking up that gun-laws are being enforced. (Congress has legislated that the CDC should not keep track of gun related deaths.) The next step – the banning of all gun-free zones as being unconstitutional – is only a short hop and step away. Dur, because emotionally unstable 18-25 year olds (who can’t afford insurance for motor-cycles in Europe because of the high death rates) will have access to all kinds of guns. Brilliant.
No European – or advanced country – has had such a spectacular social history over the same period. There are no useful comparisons.
Kryss LaBryn
People also used to get killed by them fairly regularly, so.
bearpelt
(I wanted to reply to Willoughby Chase but it wouldn’t let me.)
I agree with you on gun control, but Bowling for Columbine REALLY isn’t a good documentary. It’s incredibly biased and, as a filmmaker, I great disapprove of the techniques he uses to make his points. For one thing, he’ll never convince people who disagree with him. For another thing, the techniques are dishonest and immature. It’s not a good documentary.
Leila
Polar bears is extreme. If I have livestock, I’m going to want a hunting rifle to chase the coyotes away from my horses and foxes away from my chickens.
Mindlink
There’s bow and arrows, and noisemakers, for that.
Chupicron
Hunting rifles are INCREDIBLY useful and insanely more practical for hunting. They’re also a lot more humane, and led to more humane warfare. Guns are extremely practical and useful, and thank god we’ve got them. It just doesn’t mean every god damned person needs them, and they sure as hell don’t need to have them on their person at all times.
Guns are more accurate, less painful, and much more instant. And as far as warfare is concerned, the advancement of weapons tech has actually led to much less brutal wars with far fewer civilian casualties. You don’t even wanna know what kind of nightmare world we’d be in if we still fought with spears, swords, bows, and fire. Oh, so very much fire…
I’m all for gun control but I can not morally support the idea going back to the bow and arrow standard for both humanitarian and animal cruelty reasons.
Mindlink
Based on what, exactly ? There is no way being shot with an arrow is LESS humane than being shot with a bullet.
A skilled hunter will fell his prey with one arrow, and the prey will not suffer. There’s less chance of an bow accidentally going off than a gun, and arrows are also more socially equalising than guns and ammo, which costs money. A gunshot wound is much harder to treat than an arrow to the knee.
Matthew Davis
Tell you what. I’ll get a guy whose never shot a gun, and you get a guy whose never shot a bow, and we’ll put them up against a target at 100 yards. You tell me who is more likely to hit.
You’re right that a skilled hunter can take an animal down with one arrow, but the key word there is “skill.” If they don’t kill the animal in that one shot it’s not going to stick around for more of them. So now you’ve essentially sentenced the animal to death by blood loss or infection if you don’t find it.
I’m in favor of gun control, but let’s not pretend that guns are evil and bows, swords, etc. are noble.
David
Ummm sorry to bear bad news, but barring disintegrating or splashing ammo, both illegal as far as I know…bullet wounds are no worse than the potential trauma caused by an arrowhead..
And the difference between a “hunting rifle” and a “sniper rifle” is what?
bearpelt
That’s ridiculous. Guns make it EASIER to kill people. Guns were designed to kill people. Guns make it impersonal and make it much easier to kill a lot of people faster.
And arguing what’s the more humane way to kill people with violence seems besides the point to me.
Jacknoir
the only reason the crazed people intending to cause harm to others are using guns rather than say explosives or chemical/biological weapons is the ease with which guns can be acquired.
that should end because as we all know guns are far more deadly, I mean it takes time to pull out and aim a bomb, a bomb can only kill one or a handful of people at a time whereas a gun targets everyone with in it’s range. there’s always the possibility that a bomb will miss unlike a gun. the wound a bomb creates might be survivable depending upon where a person is hit. you can run or hide from a crazed bomber and possibly survive or some brave soul can risk their lives to stop the bomber whereas with a gun anyone within range of the gun when the shooter decides to use their weapon is dead and those outside of the kill range might be seriously maimed or injured.
the right person armed with a bomb can potentially stop the crazed bomber ether by killing them with the bomb or by convincing them to put down the bomb while a gun will kill the person using it as well unless they are out of it’s range when used.
Mindlink
Umm…. I’m not sure what point you are trying to make, but:
A bomb takes infinitely more time to prepare and use than any gun out there, even the medieval ones, a bomb is more difficult to procure, to conceal. The time spent putting the bomb together is time the maniac has to reconsider the plans, while a gun enables the maniac to have the crazy thought and end a life in just a few seconds!
Bombs made by amateurs tend to either not work properly, or explode during assembly, in the latter there are some risks of colleratal damage, but less chance than with a gun.
Explosives actually DO have an important function, and are used daily for peaceful purposes, for demolition, for putting out fires, for mining, etc., while the only peaceful purpose a gun can be put to is basically perfecting the aim.
(And no, I’m not discounting bad guys stopped by a gun, it’s still not “peaceful” to stop anyone, “good” and “peaceful” are two different words)
bearpelt
@Captain Whatever on the planet of things: Bullshit.
bearpelt
“Crazed people”? What is WITH all of the commenters on this comic hating disabled and neurodivergent people so much?
I’ll say it again and again: disabled and neurodivergent people ARE NOT INHERENTLY VIOLENT. In fact, non-disabled and neurotypical people are FAR, FAR more likely to commit acts of violence and atrocities and we disabled and/or neurodivergent folks are more likely to be on the receiving end of it.
PLEASE stop equating mental illness and violence.
Captain Whatever on the planet of things
“Crazed” actually just means wild and out of control, and has nothing to do with mental illness.
Captain Whatever on the planet of things
You seem to have replied to the wrong post, but have a look at a dictionary sometime.
Mindlink
No, but violent people often TURN crazy, thereby becoming “crazed”. It’s not being crazy makes you violent, but that violence like this is in itself crazy.
Adam Black
Or we could reinstate assault rifle ban,
put tight controls on all Clip ammunition; and full background checks that weed out terrorisst , felons ad the insane.
It shouldnt be harder vote , drive and but cold medicine than buy a semiautomatic military assault weapon and ammo.
There will still be shootings , but It will harder to make it mass slaughter in seconds.
I do have qualms on the argument “don’t give crazies guns!” (which I know is not quite what you said, but it reminded me.) Because if you mean people with an established violent behavior in their past, sure, but if you just mean “he had a mental illness, no guns for you” then all you are REALLY saying is “if you want a gun, don’t get help!” Also, most people with disorders – even those that correlate more with violence – aren’t personally dangerous, so it’s kinda equivalent to the idea you shouldn’t give poor people guns because they commit more hold-up-style robberies.
Also, I’m pretty sure 90% of us would be diagnosable with something if we went to therapy. We just get by without it. So maybe that’s our backdoor gun control!
“Only people who have never been found to have a psychological disorder with no felony record can have guns. Mandatory mental health visits for all citizens result in massive diagnoses. Make it a felony not to participate fully in the process!”
Boom, we’re all diagnosed with SOMETHING at some time in our life, OR we all have felonies, and guns are gone!
The Biggest Tom
Mass shootings are pretty much always committed with handguns, not assault weapons.
Mindlink
Any weapon is an assault weapon, isn’t it ? A hammer is an assault weapon if it’s used to smash a person instead of a nail.
Captain Whatever on the planet of things
Yeah but “assault rifles” look scary.
Mindlink
How ? The word “rifle” or “weapon” is just as scary as “assault”.
Captain Whatever on the planet of things
No, to many people (possible even most people, tbh) rifle is not a scary word. Calling weapons “assault rifles” helps to turn them into a bogeyman that we can all fret over.
not yet
“Assault rifle” is pretty well-defined as a rifle capable of fully automatic fire built for combat. “Assault weapon” is the “vague” and “scary” term. As far as I know, it comes from the Ban, and if you go with that definition, most mass shootings don’t involve them.
Mindlink
I don’t think so, why should “assault” make a word that allready signifies death and destruction more scary ? You can assault someone without a weapon, which to me at least is a lot less scarier than being assaulted WITH a weapon, the weapon is the scary part.
bearpelt
Oh my fucking god “THE INSANE”??? Why do all of you hate mentally ill people so much? Most murders are neurotypical and non-disabled. I’m so disgusted by how many fans of this comic hate people like me.
not yet
I can’t speak for Adam Black, but to me “insane” and “mentally ill” are not remotely synonymous. “Insane” would refer to a very small minority who are completely irrational and unpredictable.
sps48
If I understand your 2nd paragraph correctly (voting, driving, buying cold medicine is harder)- I vote, drive, purchase pseudoephedrine, and purchase firearms.
Buying firearm is by far the most time consuming, costly (not including the sales price), and regulated of your list. And driving and buying cold medicine is NOT specifically allowed by the Constitution of the United States of America.
maveric101
“Or we could reinstate assault rifle ban”
> Assault rifles ARE banned. Assault rifle means fully automatic. Anti-gun people decided to call AR-15 style semi-automatic magazine-fed rifles “assault weapons” so that they would sound worse and people like you would confuse them with military weapons.
“put tight controls on all Clip ammunition”
> WTF is “clip ammunition?” You mean magazines? Magazine sizes?
“full background checks that weed out terrorisst , felons ad the insane.”
> There are background checks for purchasing new guns, but not for private. Personally, I’m not inherently opposed to requiring private sales to be handled through a FFL-licensed third party (like a gun shop) so that background checks can be done for those, too.
“It shouldnt be harder vote , drive and but cold medicine than buy a semiautomatic military assault weapon and ammo.”
> It isn’t. Also, they aren’t military weapons. The M-4 and M-16 are fully automatic, AR-15 rifles are not. You clearly know nothing about the topic.
“There will still be shootings , but It will harder to make it mass slaughter in seconds.”
> You mean with smaller magazines? False. Changing a magazine takes very little time.
Part of the problem is that shootings stopped by civilians tend to get stopped right at the beginning, so they don’t make it to ‘mass killing’ stage, or to the news.
Fred P
I’m unimpressed.
There’s a mass shooting roughly every other week in the U.S. source Assuming that all the ones in your link are accurate, that’s around a 5% stoppage rate.
There, have an article discussing the results of yet another study proving that guns don’t make us safer or help in preventing mass shootings.
P.S., 22 incidents is an embarrassingly small percentage of mass shootings, but IIRC even those anemic numbers usually feature some retired cops — i.e., less “civilian” than they appear on the surface.
Crumplepunch
Oh man that site. With articles such as “Leftist Racism”, “Leftism is Authoritarian” and my personal favourite, “Hitler a Socialist”.
Mindlink
“and my personal favourite, “Hitler a Socialist”.”
Well, that WAS the name of his party….
LordofthePotatoes
And I call myself the Lord of the Potatoes but am neither a spud, nor a lord of any fashion. Look at the policies and pick out the socialist ones. Then tell me if Hitler was a socialist.
Mindlink
Not in action, of course, but still, officially at least.
Trolldrool
National Socialist Party. Socialism and National Socialism has virtually nothing in common except the name. In fact, the only people Hitler hated more than socialists were the jews.
bearpelt
Ah. Any website that tries to argue that Hitler was anything other than far-right (by current Americans terms) is full of shit.
870 thoughts on “Risk”
Ana Chronistic
so with Becky in the car, Toedad gets gunned down by one of those armed civilians the NRA loves so much
then… she gets back out of the car…
TOTALLY WORTH IT #winning
That Damn Rat
As I said last time this was raised, can anyone remember an instance of that actually happening? Because I can’t.
Ana Chronistic
yeah, too bad
Wasted
Shooting in middle of Chicago earlier this year, stopped by an armed Uber driver.
Willoughby Chase
Yeah, a couple of armed goons stopped by civilians. So worth the deaths of children at Sandyhook.
Michael
And just this month in Michigan, a legal carrier decided that a fleeing shoplifter was worth pulling out her firearm in a busy parking lot. She failed to shoot out the tires as she had intended, so thank whatever deity you believe in that there wasn’t any collateral damage. This “everyone is a hero if only they’re armed” mentality is DANGEROUS.
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2015/10/13/woman–home-depot-shooting-charged/73863544/
masterofbones
That wasn’t what was being discussed. One person asked if it had happened, another person said it had. No discussion of pros and cons was raised.
TheEighthShader
Dina was in the car the whole time, and they start loving each other in the back seat as soon as Becky gets in.
SpacemanSpiff85
If you meant someone with a gun preventing a shooting, it happened in April in Chicago.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-uber-driver-shoots-gunman-met-0420-20150419-story.html
Ana Chronistic
This is still more impressive any day of the week:
https://www.facebook.com/NBC4i/videos/10152899878837751/
inqntrol
I hope that guy will live for very long time.
Darwin
I’ve seen that, but the one where wheelchair guy stops a robbery is even cooler. That’s the toughest mofo in his town. I’d hate to run into him in a dark alley. With his upper body strength, he could probably run me down and pummel me to death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rFEx-mkXn8
Skizz
http://youtu.be/nOkwhYX9v_0
This is easily my favourite, my hero
MichaelHaneline
I’m impressed by that man’s courage, and glad he didn’t get stabbed in the process of the grab. If that robber had a gun instead of a knife it could’ve gone much worse. 🙁
MrSpkr
That’s my home town. I know the dude. Stupid robber; had it been most anyone else around here, he would’ve been shot.
MrSpkr
Midlothian, that is. The Texas firefighter.
Kryss LaBryn
There was a robbery at the 7/11 in a small BC town just before we moved there. Only hold-up the place has ever had.
They cooperated and gave him what he wanted and as soon as he left the first call was to his mum.
Pro tip: If you’re gonna rob a convenience store, maybe don’t do it in the small town of 2000 people you grew up in, where everyone knows everyone else, and they know you. 😀
Screwball
As Daniel the Human has said MANY times…
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF HUMAN STUPIDITY…
Tyler B
I can only think of one. There was an Uber driver in Chicago earlier this year who shot a man who was firing into a crowd of people near Logan Square.
Wasted
Appalachian School of Law shooting. Gunman taken down by armed students in 2002.
Also the mall shooting either last year or so where the shooter didn’t fire, but the threat of an armed civilian was enough to make the shooter go hide and kill himself.
There are plenty of other cases where armed civilians stop shootings before they become “mass”. Unfortunately, because they’re not “mass”, anti-gunners use this as an excuse to dismiss legitimate cases of self-defense shootings.
Wasted
RE: mall shooting – I mean, where the armed civilian didn’t fire. The shooter had opened fire, but the armed civilian was enough for the guy to give up and kill himself.
Willoughby Chase
SO, those killings of adults by children … what is it? One a week now?
Nice open air asylum you got going. Hope you enjoy it.
PDV
Fun fact: Scotland has a significantly higher per capita rate of death by mass shooting than the US. Second fun fact: In the last 20 years, Scotland has had only one mass shooting (1997, 17 dead). The USA is so goddamned huge that we have a lot of everything.
(Also, since pre-1800, we’ve had elevated levels of murder relative to the rest of the Anglosphere. No one knows why, but it can’t be a matter of policy, because no policy has stayed constant over that period.)
Hotsauce
My I’ve often wondered if it’s related to a rapid increase in population density. We went from “I have all kinds of space and don’t have to deal with anyone I don’t want to,” to “I’m less than 100 yards from other people all the time but still want to act like I don’t have to deal with them.”
I could be wrong.
LordofthePotatoes
If that were the case there’d be a spree a week in London.
Turkey
A quick google of shooting spree rates didn’t show Scotland at all. I instead saw Norway, Finland and Switzerland, as those are all low population countries with isolated incidents in the period(s) being examined.
To make a fairer comparison, you would need to examine a period large enough for a statistically meaningful number of incidents in each country (which makes trends hard to spot), or examine only countries (or collections of countries) with a statistically meaningful number of incidents in the period.
LiamKav
Yeah, that fact about Scotland doesn’t seem true at all. I’ve tried to look but I can only find facts about either England or the UK as a whole, so I’m going to have to do a “citiation needed” here.
Also, I question your argument based on those statistics. You are saying that Scotland has a higher number of people killed in a mass shooting than the US per capita, even though they’ve only had one shooting in the past 19 years (Dunblane was 1996, not 1997). As a single example makes for poor statistical analysis, the fact that Scotland has only had one compared to the US’s many would seem to agree with the overall statement that you have a much higher chance of being killed in a shooting spree in the US than in Scotland.
Crumplepunch
I live in Scotland. You know what we did after that mass shooting (1996, by the way)? We heavily increased regulation on firearms, especially handguns. No more mass shootings!
bearpelt
Alright, I agree with you on the gun control topic, but was it really necessary with the intense amount of ableism you displayed in your comment? Asylums were and are inherently abusive places where disabled people like me are often forced to stay against their will and have no autonomy or way out. Using something that serious as an insult is incredibly offensive. Please stop trying to insult people by comparing them to disabled people.
anna
As a disabled person, please don’t speak for me. It’s insulting to assert that all people who fit into a certain category think and feel and judge things exactly the same. Thanks.
bearpelt
Wow, assuming I’m not disabled either?
TheEighthShader
As a person on the interweb, he is entitled to say whatever the bloody hell he wants to, I can overuse “bloody” and people can be offensive, And theres nothing you can do to stop them, unless you have something meaningful to add to the nonsense, dont try to throw yourself a pity party, and invite everyone else.
random832
Inherently abusive, or abusive in implementation?
But, no, let’s just close them all and let those who can’t support themselves live on the streets, because reforming is hard.
LiamKav
The term itself is outdated. If the comment had been about psychiatric hospitals, I can kinda how you’d get upset, but “asylum” usually refers to a historical “insane asylum” of the type you’d find the Joker and Two-Face in, and is pretty far removed from anything that you’d find today that it makes to pretty obvious the original comment is just engaging in (humorous) hyperbole.
SDGlyph
I thought it was pretty well established that armed civilians do NOT successfully intervene in the great majority of cases. I don’t have the stats to hand, but of course they came out again in the last couple of weeks.
And that’s not considering the number of accidents or non-public individual homicides, or the fact that lower availability of guns is directly and reliably correlated with lower gun death stats.
Mindlink
Just because it works in some cases, doesn’t make it any less crazy or reduce the inherent risks of escalating the situation badly.
There is no reason to NOT be anti-gun, none, if the only good a gun can do is stop others with guns, cause without guns there’d be no other people with guns to stop in the first place. You don’t need a gun to do hunting, we didn’t need guns to hunt before.
SzL
I hate to be a devil’s advocate, but if you live in a place with polar bears you’re gonna want a gun. I realise that isn’t America, but there are almost always counterexamples, even if they’re tiny.
Mindlink
Yeah, I’m from Norway, so I know that on Svalbard you are not even allowed to venture outside of the town borders without a gun, but people lived before guns became usefull against polar bears too, so…
Willoughby Chase
European countries and the US are so far apart culturally and politically on this issue, there no useful comparisons.
Watch Bowling for Columbine. At core, the US problem is down to racism. White people fear coloureds and to “protect” themselves, they arm themselves.
This is in particular after the Civil Rights movements of the 60s came into being. Suddenly, Jim Crow laws were thrown out, the Services were integrated, and the riots and Johnson’s Great Society came into being.
It’s during the 70s that the NRA started ramping up, the GOP began it’s Southern Strategy and the Religious right rose to power culminating in the current GOP bifurcated amongst moderates and Tea Party idiots, all them who seem to advocate less gun control.
Since then every time guns cause damage in the US, the answer is yet more fucking guns, yet more lax gun laws, and nobody checking up that gun-laws are being enforced. (Congress has legislated that the CDC should not keep track of gun related deaths.) The next step – the banning of all gun-free zones as being unconstitutional – is only a short hop and step away. Dur, because emotionally unstable 18-25 year olds (who can’t afford insurance for motor-cycles in Europe because of the high death rates) will have access to all kinds of guns. Brilliant.
No European – or advanced country – has had such a spectacular social history over the same period. There are no useful comparisons.
Kryss LaBryn
People also used to get killed by them fairly regularly, so.
bearpelt
(I wanted to reply to Willoughby Chase but it wouldn’t let me.)
I agree with you on gun control, but Bowling for Columbine REALLY isn’t a good documentary. It’s incredibly biased and, as a filmmaker, I great disapprove of the techniques he uses to make his points. For one thing, he’ll never convince people who disagree with him. For another thing, the techniques are dishonest and immature. It’s not a good documentary.
Leila
Polar bears is extreme. If I have livestock, I’m going to want a hunting rifle to chase the coyotes away from my horses and foxes away from my chickens.
Mindlink
There’s bow and arrows, and noisemakers, for that.
Chupicron
Hunting rifles are INCREDIBLY useful and insanely more practical for hunting. They’re also a lot more humane, and led to more humane warfare. Guns are extremely practical and useful, and thank god we’ve got them. It just doesn’t mean every god damned person needs them, and they sure as hell don’t need to have them on their person at all times.
Guns are more accurate, less painful, and much more instant. And as far as warfare is concerned, the advancement of weapons tech has actually led to much less brutal wars with far fewer civilian casualties. You don’t even wanna know what kind of nightmare world we’d be in if we still fought with spears, swords, bows, and fire. Oh, so very much fire…
I’m all for gun control but I can not morally support the idea going back to the bow and arrow standard for both humanitarian and animal cruelty reasons.
Mindlink
Based on what, exactly ? There is no way being shot with an arrow is LESS humane than being shot with a bullet.
A skilled hunter will fell his prey with one arrow, and the prey will not suffer. There’s less chance of an bow accidentally going off than a gun, and arrows are also more socially equalising than guns and ammo, which costs money. A gunshot wound is much harder to treat than an arrow to the knee.
Matthew Davis
Tell you what. I’ll get a guy whose never shot a gun, and you get a guy whose never shot a bow, and we’ll put them up against a target at 100 yards. You tell me who is more likely to hit.
You’re right that a skilled hunter can take an animal down with one arrow, but the key word there is “skill.” If they don’t kill the animal in that one shot it’s not going to stick around for more of them. So now you’ve essentially sentenced the animal to death by blood loss or infection if you don’t find it.
I’m in favor of gun control, but let’s not pretend that guns are evil and bows, swords, etc. are noble.
David
Ummm sorry to bear bad news, but barring disintegrating or splashing ammo, both illegal as far as I know…bullet wounds are no worse than the potential trauma caused by an arrowhead..
CptNerd
And the difference between a “hunting rifle” and a “sniper rifle” is what?
bearpelt
That’s ridiculous. Guns make it EASIER to kill people. Guns were designed to kill people. Guns make it impersonal and make it much easier to kill a lot of people faster.
And arguing what’s the more humane way to kill people with violence seems besides the point to me.
Jacknoir
the only reason the crazed people intending to cause harm to others are using guns rather than say explosives or chemical/biological weapons is the ease with which guns can be acquired.
that should end because as we all know guns are far more deadly, I mean it takes time to pull out and aim a bomb, a bomb can only kill one or a handful of people at a time whereas a gun targets everyone with in it’s range. there’s always the possibility that a bomb will miss unlike a gun. the wound a bomb creates might be survivable depending upon where a person is hit. you can run or hide from a crazed bomber and possibly survive or some brave soul can risk their lives to stop the bomber whereas with a gun anyone within range of the gun when the shooter decides to use their weapon is dead and those outside of the kill range might be seriously maimed or injured.
the right person armed with a bomb can potentially stop the crazed bomber ether by killing them with the bomb or by convincing them to put down the bomb while a gun will kill the person using it as well unless they are out of it’s range when used.
Mindlink
Umm…. I’m not sure what point you are trying to make, but:
A bomb takes infinitely more time to prepare and use than any gun out there, even the medieval ones, a bomb is more difficult to procure, to conceal. The time spent putting the bomb together is time the maniac has to reconsider the plans, while a gun enables the maniac to have the crazy thought and end a life in just a few seconds!
Bombs made by amateurs tend to either not work properly, or explode during assembly, in the latter there are some risks of colleratal damage, but less chance than with a gun.
Explosives actually DO have an important function, and are used daily for peaceful purposes, for demolition, for putting out fires, for mining, etc., while the only peaceful purpose a gun can be put to is basically perfecting the aim.
(And no, I’m not discounting bad guys stopped by a gun, it’s still not “peaceful” to stop anyone, “good” and “peaceful” are two different words)
bearpelt
@Captain Whatever on the planet of things: Bullshit.
bearpelt
“Crazed people”? What is WITH all of the commenters on this comic hating disabled and neurodivergent people so much?
I’ll say it again and again: disabled and neurodivergent people ARE NOT INHERENTLY VIOLENT. In fact, non-disabled and neurotypical people are FAR, FAR more likely to commit acts of violence and atrocities and we disabled and/or neurodivergent folks are more likely to be on the receiving end of it.
PLEASE stop equating mental illness and violence.
Captain Whatever on the planet of things
“Crazed” actually just means wild and out of control, and has nothing to do with mental illness.
Captain Whatever on the planet of things
You seem to have replied to the wrong post, but have a look at a dictionary sometime.
Mindlink
No, but violent people often TURN crazy, thereby becoming “crazed”. It’s not being crazy makes you violent, but that violence like this is in itself crazy.
Adam Black
Or we could reinstate assault rifle ban,
put tight controls on all Clip ammunition; and full background checks that weed out terrorisst , felons ad the insane.
It shouldnt be harder vote , drive and but cold medicine than buy a semiautomatic military assault weapon and ammo.
There will still be shootings , but It will harder to make it mass slaughter in seconds.
Shadlyn Wolfe
I do have qualms on the argument “don’t give crazies guns!” (which I know is not quite what you said, but it reminded me.) Because if you mean people with an established violent behavior in their past, sure, but if you just mean “he had a mental illness, no guns for you” then all you are REALLY saying is “if you want a gun, don’t get help!” Also, most people with disorders – even those that correlate more with violence – aren’t personally dangerous, so it’s kinda equivalent to the idea you shouldn’t give poor people guns because they commit more hold-up-style robberies.
Also, I’m pretty sure 90% of us would be diagnosable with something if we went to therapy. We just get by without it. So maybe that’s our backdoor gun control!
“Only people who have never been found to have a psychological disorder with no felony record can have guns. Mandatory mental health visits for all citizens result in massive diagnoses. Make it a felony not to participate fully in the process!”
Boom, we’re all diagnosed with SOMETHING at some time in our life, OR we all have felonies, and guns are gone!
The Biggest Tom
Mass shootings are pretty much always committed with handguns, not assault weapons.
Mindlink
Any weapon is an assault weapon, isn’t it ? A hammer is an assault weapon if it’s used to smash a person instead of a nail.
Captain Whatever on the planet of things
Yeah but “assault rifles” look scary.
Mindlink
How ? The word “rifle” or “weapon” is just as scary as “assault”.
Captain Whatever on the planet of things
No, to many people (possible even most people, tbh) rifle is not a scary word. Calling weapons “assault rifles” helps to turn them into a bogeyman that we can all fret over.
not yet
“Assault rifle” is pretty well-defined as a rifle capable of fully automatic fire built for combat. “Assault weapon” is the “vague” and “scary” term. As far as I know, it comes from the Ban, and if you go with that definition, most mass shootings don’t involve them.
Mindlink
I don’t think so, why should “assault” make a word that allready signifies death and destruction more scary ? You can assault someone without a weapon, which to me at least is a lot less scarier than being assaulted WITH a weapon, the weapon is the scary part.
bearpelt
Oh my fucking god “THE INSANE”??? Why do all of you hate mentally ill people so much? Most murders are neurotypical and non-disabled. I’m so disgusted by how many fans of this comic hate people like me.
not yet
I can’t speak for Adam Black, but to me “insane” and “mentally ill” are not remotely synonymous. “Insane” would refer to a very small minority who are completely irrational and unpredictable.
sps48
If I understand your 2nd paragraph correctly (voting, driving, buying cold medicine is harder)- I vote, drive, purchase pseudoephedrine, and purchase firearms.
Buying firearm is by far the most time consuming, costly (not including the sales price), and regulated of your list. And driving and buying cold medicine is NOT specifically allowed by the Constitution of the United States of America.
maveric101
“Or we could reinstate assault rifle ban”
> Assault rifles ARE banned. Assault rifle means fully automatic. Anti-gun people decided to call AR-15 style semi-automatic magazine-fed rifles “assault weapons” so that they would sound worse and people like you would confuse them with military weapons.
“put tight controls on all Clip ammunition”
> WTF is “clip ammunition?” You mean magazines? Magazine sizes?
“full background checks that weed out terrorisst , felons ad the insane.”
> There are background checks for purchasing new guns, but not for private. Personally, I’m not inherently opposed to requiring private sales to be handled through a FFL-licensed third party (like a gun shop) so that background checks can be done for those, too.
“It shouldnt be harder vote , drive and but cold medicine than buy a semiautomatic military assault weapon and ammo.”
> It isn’t. Also, they aren’t military weapons. The M-4 and M-16 are fully automatic, AR-15 rifles are not. You clearly know nothing about the topic.
“There will still be shootings , but It will harder to make it mass slaughter in seconds.”
> You mean with smaller magazines? False. Changing a magazine takes very little time.
David Fenger
Here’s a list of 22 relatively well documented cases of it:
http://gunwatch.blogspot.ca/2015/05/mass-killings-stopped-by-armed-citizens.html
Part of the problem is that shootings stopped by civilians tend to get stopped right at the beginning, so they don’t make it to ‘mass killing’ stage, or to the news.
Fred P
I’m unimpressed.
There’s a mass shooting roughly every other week in the U.S. source Assuming that all the ones in your link are accurate, that’s around a 5% stoppage rate.
Li
Wow what a reliable source
First statement is literally a lie, second is… really unbiased, like, super objective reporting.
http://www.armedwithreason.com/more-guns-more-crime-yet-another-study-debunking-the-myth/
There, have an article discussing the results of yet another study proving that guns don’t make us safer or help in preventing mass shootings.
P.S., 22 incidents is an embarrassingly small percentage of mass shootings, but IIRC even those anemic numbers usually feature some retired cops — i.e., less “civilian” than they appear on the surface.
Crumplepunch
Oh man that site. With articles such as “Leftist Racism”, “Leftism is Authoritarian” and my personal favourite, “Hitler a Socialist”.
Mindlink
“and my personal favourite, “Hitler a Socialist”.”
Well, that WAS the name of his party….
LordofthePotatoes
And I call myself the Lord of the Potatoes but am neither a spud, nor a lord of any fashion. Look at the policies and pick out the socialist ones. Then tell me if Hitler was a socialist.
Mindlink
Not in action, of course, but still, officially at least.
Trolldrool
National Socialist Party. Socialism and National Socialism has virtually nothing in common except the name. In fact, the only people Hitler hated more than socialists were the jews.
bearpelt
Ah. Any website that tries to argue that Hitler was anything other than far-right (by current Americans terms) is full of shit.