Mass shooting at New Jersey shopping mall.

[neubejiita]

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/new_jersey&id=8793473

Another crazed gunman goes on a rampage with an illegal automatic weapon in the gun crazy American continent. When will Americans stop this silly obsession with gun violence and stop these shootings.? is this a disgruntled ex-employee?

Three people are dead, including the alleged gunman, in an early-morning shootout inside a New Jersey shopping center.

Police responded to shots fired inside the Pathmark, where employees were stocking shelves, at 1043 Route 9 in Old Bridge just before 4 a.m. The store was scheduled to open at 6 a.m.

Shooting inside Pathmark in Old Bridge
View all 6 photos
The gunman, who was reportedly wearing body armor, was tentatively identified as a 23-year-old ex-Marine who worked at the supermarket for the last two weeks.

[Tristan]

Oh shit another one? Glad I don't live there :/

[Lizardcommando]

Goddamn, another fucking shooting. Fucking coward.

[HumanBones]

I feel like there is going to be one a week now just for the attention. Really horrible.

[Maes]

The gunman, who was reportedly wearing body armor, was tentatively identified as a 23-year-old ex-Marine who worked at the supermarket for the last two weeks.

Usually, it's Doom who's blamed for inspiring the killings. But this time, the killings could be used to inspire a Doom mod/story:

The radio crackered: "you're fired, Marine."
"No!" said the Marine! "I need this job!"
The radio said: "No Marine, you are the controversial gun violence".
And then the Marine was a disgruntled ex-employee.

[ducon]

These shooters are the modern Herostratus.

[Snakes]

HumanBones said:

I feel like there is going to be one a week now just for the attention. Really horrible.

I don't know about that. Just like 'bath salts' was a hot word not too long ago, but any stories of crazy zombie-esque rampages have died down in the news severely. 'Shooting' has a lot of the same trends - the whole of the country paid less and less attention to each one. Heck, this is the only place I've heard about this particular shooting, and it was the last place anyone posted a story related to zombie/bath salts.

A shooting of this scale isn't an infrequent thing. Note that the linked website is a local news outlet.

neubejiita said:

Another crazed gunman goes on a rampage with an illegal automatic weapon in the gun crazy American continent.

I take it you mean the United States of America, which is not a continent but a country. Mexico is a part of North America, but has fairly strict gun laws, IIRC.

[Marcaek]

Snakes said:

Mexico is a part of North America, but has fairly strict gun laws, IIRC.

Of course. Wouldn't want anyone challenging the cartel and zeta gangsters.

[Snakes]

Yeah, but one typically wouldn't refer to them as Americans, which was really the root of my statement. Take Canada's gun violence (as opposed to gun laws) for a better example if you will.

[Fulgrim]

neubejiita said:

Another crazed gunman goes on a rampage with an illegal automatic weapon in the gun crazy American continent. When will Americans stop this silly obsession with gun violence and stop these shootings.? is this a disgruntled ex-employee?

Its not the gun ownership that is the problem. Gun violence is one of the symptoms of a greater problem. The greater problem being the fact that American society is broken and has been for years.

The Education system has been failing kids for years. Upward mobility is none existent at this point. The wealth gap in the States is a canyon and the average working class citizen makes less money now then they did when Clinton was in office. The war on drugs is a failure and it has created more problems in America then it has fixed. People are being brainwashed left and right through politics, the mainstream media and even by religious figures that misuse religion. I could keep going but I'm sure people will get the point.

If people in the US where to start working on the issues above America would start moving in the right direct and crime rates across the board will start to fall. The biggest roadblock is the fact that its going to take a large amount of effort from about 90% of the US population to even get the ball rolling in the right direction.

Also if history has showed us anything. Stricter gun control will have the same effect that Prohibition had on crime and Alcohol consumption.

[Quast]

edit: nm

mods delete stupid post please, thanks.

Grazza: This one silly.

[Grazza]

Quast said:

mods delete stupid post please, thanks.

Which one? I see several. :p

[schwerpunk]

ducon said:

These shooters are the modern Herostratus.

100 points awarded for erudition.

Although now we'll surely both be put to death for discussing this.

[Clonehunter]

I blame the Legend of Zelda on this one.

[hex11]

Maybe someone threw peanuts at him...

[Graf Zahl]

Satyr000 said:

Also if history has showed us anything. Stricter gun control will have the same effect that Prohibition had on crime and Alcohol consumption.

Strange, then, that countries with extremely strict gun control laws really have a lot less gun related violence.


The math is extremely simple: If some nutjob who gets the urge to shoot people has no means to get a gun he can't shoot anyone. End of story.

[Maes]

Graf Zahl said:

The math is extremely simple: If some nutjob who gets the urge to shoot people has no means to get a gun he can't shoot anyone. End of story.

But seeing how the majority of such nutjobs are almost always revealed a-posteriori to have been scheming and "preparing" themselves just for such a hit, closing down the legal channels of acquiring weapons does nothing.

They will simply get an AK-47 or handgun from an Albanian smuggler (the Balkans and even mainland Europe was flooded by those in the 90s) for the right price, items which would be off-limits even with a license or outright banned for civilian use anyway. Ironically, a smuggled AK-47 with enough ammo to start your own Columbine might cost less than a legal sporting hunting shotgun + associated licensing costs, plus you won't attract the attention of the authorities by having yourself on file.

Let alone that most of such nutjobs also try "complementing" their arsenal by preparing at least one IED with common chemistry knowledge, which, as of yet, cannot be banned.

The bottom line: if someone is really ready to go down taking several others with him, he will find a way to do it, no matter how much gun control you have in place.

Such killings are almost never done at the whim of a moment: they take planning and preparing, and the "found a gun and ran" scenario is really the minority. Plus someone who's determined to go down couldn't care less about your gun control laws, so he can afford to be a bit careless/bold when looking for a gun.

Hasn't Germany had the most school shootings in the EU, BTW? With all that so-called "German strictness", one would except them to be virtually inexistent ;-)

[Technician]

Maes said:

Hasn't Germany had the most school shootings in the EU, BTW? With all that so-called "German strictness", one would except them to be virtually inexistent ;-)

The kid probably just got out of jail for making a veiled Nazi joke and wanted to take out his frustration on society.

[Aliotroph?]

In high school I used to sit around outlining ways to kill people en-mass given whatever the current security measures were. Somehow, very few people were convinced their security measures were worthless. Instead they just feared me a bit more.

[Technician]

Aliotroph? said:

In high school I used to sit around outlining ways to kill people en-mass given whatever the current security measures were. Somehow, very few people were convinced their security measures were worthless. Instead they just feared me a bit more.

Wasn't their security measure nothing more than leading all the students into one room? If anything, it makes it easier to go on a mass shooting.

[geekmarine]

Look, I'm not going to argue against gun control, but I think it's safe to say that most of these nuts would not have these rifles if the sale of these rifles was banned. I mean, remember the Batman shooter? Some little science dweeb who went off his rocker. You really think he has connections to get black market weapons? I doubt he'd even know how to get in contact with someone to buy guns on the black market.

These are not career criminals we're talking about, and they almost certainly don't have the kinds of criminal connections necessary to get these high-power weapons if they were unavailable through legal channels. Career criminals, gang bangers, etc., yeah, I can believe that they'll always have access to this kind of firepower, but these mass shootings haven't been committed by people with that kind of background.

[Aliotroph?]

Technician said:

Wasn't their security measure nothing more than leading all the students into one room? If anything, it makes it easier to go on a mass shooting.

It involved locking everyone in the nearest room (which was usually wherever your class was) and hiding against the wall so nobody could see you through the door. This would be effective against rogue parents trying to abduct their kids or certain kinds of attackers external to the school. It wouldn't work against something like the Columbine guys because they'd anticipate and work around it. For some reason pointing that out upset people.

The worst thing they did when I was in high school was lock everyone in the gym once a month for one of those crappy assemblies designed to keep up morale or whatever. 2000 people in one room is just asking for a disgruntled, clever kid to truck in some explosives or automatic weapons.

[Fulgrim]

Graf Zahl said:

Strange, then, that countries with extremely strict gun control laws really have a lot less gun related violence.


The math is extremely simple: If some nutjob who gets the urge to shoot people has no means to get a gun he can't shoot anyone. End of story.

And whats stopping a nut job from going down to Mexico buying a gun and sneaking it into the US? Hundreds of illegal firearms cross the border and end up in the hands of gang/cartel members everyday. On both sides of the border.

Lets also not forget the fact that most countries with strict gun control have been enforcing gun control for years in some cases centuries. For an example Japan has incredibly strict gun control laws. Japan also started passing gun control laws back in the 17 century.

The math as you put it might be simple. But I want ask you a few questions about how you would go about applying gun control in the US. How would you go about ensuring that no guns cross into the US from other countries? How would you disarm every American citizen, even those who legally own a firearm? What are you going to say to the family member of those who will be killed trying to disarm people? Every thing looks simple and easy on paper. Applying it in the real world is not so simple.

[DoomUK]

Graf Zahl said:

The math is extremely simple: If some nutjob who gets the urge to shoot people has no means to get a gun he can't shoot anyone. End of story.

You're making the assumption that he can't find some other way of killing or causing harm to others. Or, as has been suggested above, he won't obtain a firearm through illegal channels. Of course I can see how a reduction in the frequency of this kind of incident and the number of people hurt when they occur would be a victory, but the United Kingdom has had it's share of gun-related tragedies despite our strict gun laws. Declaring the rarity of mass shootings is of little comfort to the families of those that were killed.

Throttling the numbers of guns in society doesn't remove the evil people within it. And at the risk of beating a dead horse, it also robs decent citizens of the chance of defending themselves against some psycho who wants to murder/rape/rob them. It's not a pleasant thing to think about, but if I lived somewhere where I felt the risk of getting murdered was prominent enough, I would feel safer if I owned a gun, despite the possibility of it being the very instrument which might be used against me.

Also, though it's not going to win any hearts and minds, there's the recreational, non-violent application of firearms that's difficult to join in if you live in a country where guns are mainly the preserve of the upper-class. Guns are fun, shooting non-living things is fun.

[Graf Zahl]

Maes said:

Hasn't Germany had the most school shootings in the EU, BTW? With all that so-called "German strictness", one would except them to be virtually inexistent ;-)

I don't think so. Two major cases in the last 10 years - and in both cases the weapons came from a nutjob collector in the family who didn't take care of their weapons properly. I think they just prove the point that stricter gun control makes these things less likely to happen.

DoomUK said:

Throttling the numbers of guns in society doesn't remove the evil people within it. And at the risk of beating a dead horse, it also robs decent citizens of the chance of defending themselves against some psycho who wants to murder/rape/rob them. It's not a pleasant thing to think about, but if I lived somewhere where I felt the risk of getting murdered was prominent enough, I would feel safer if I owned a gun, despite the possibility of it being the very instrument which might be used against me.

Sorry, but that argument doesn't fly.

Less guns means less people owning guns which means a reduced chance of getting into such situations which of course means less need to defend oneself.

[Fulgrim]

Graf Zahl said:

Sorry, but that argument doesn't fly.

Less guns means less people owning guns which means a reduced chance of getting into such situations which of course means less need to defend oneself.

Its not that simple. If someone wants to kill people bad enough they will find away to do it.

What was stopping James Holmes from tossing a couple pipe bomb's into the crowed then running out the exit before they went off, instead of shooting people in movie theater? Hell, he could have even smuggled a molotov cocktail under his coat, lit the damn thing and tossed into the seats or brought a hunting knife into the theater and went on a killing spree.

There are 100s of ways to kill people just because you take away one does not change that fact that people are going to kill people.

[Doom Juan]

Maes said:

Usually, it's Doom who's blamed for inspiring the killings. But this time, the killings could be used to inspire a Doom mod/story:

The radio crackered: "you're fired, Marine."
"No!" said the Marine! "I need this job!"
The radio said: "No Marine, you are the controversial gun violence".
And then the Marine was a disgruntled ex-employee.

I lol'd.

[Graf Zahl]

Yeah, so please explain to me then that the USA with their ultra-liberal gun laws have such a disproportionately high amount of gun related violence compared to countries that don't.

You are right, you can't stop those who are utterly determined to cause damage.

However, if you manage to stop those who might get held back by the difficulties in obtaining weapons very, very much would be already gained.

[Fulgrim]

Graf Zahl said:

Yeah, so please explain to me then that the USA with their ultra-liberal gun laws have such a disproportionately high amount of gun related violence compared to countries that don't.

You are right, you can't stop those who are utterly determined to cause damage.

However, if you manage to stop those who might get held back by the difficulties in obtaining weapons very, very much would be already gained.

You can't simply snap your fingers and make all the fire arms in the US disappear and prevent any new firearms from entering the country. Even if we had stricter gun control gun violence would still be a huge issue. Just look at the Middle East. A large number of countries have strict gun control laws. A large number of countries have spent billions of dollars attempting to disarm there citizens and prevent new guns from entering the country. Yet the rate of gun violence still remains very, very high and there are millions of firearms in the counties with strict gun control.

Gun violence in the US is a symptom of greater problems. Nothing will change until you fix the real problems. For example,ending the war on drugs and putting drug programs in place like the ones in Sweden would cause a considerable drop in gun violence. The gangs will lose power/numbers and as that happens the large percentage of gun violence centered around gang activity will go down.

Also I don't think you noticed Graf or maybe you are choosing to ignore the facts. But, the vast majority of gun violence is caused by people who obtained firearms illegally. So changing our gun laws won't really do anything.

[hex11]

The hell with this banning talk. We need MORE guns. I should be able to legally buy an M60 machine gun, if I want one. Something to keep those asshole federales and cops from fucking with me...