Party Vibe

US gun laws vary from state to state/

I personally think the right to bear arms is ingrained into US culture and is needed because in many respects the USA is still at a stage of civil war, particularly between different racial and cultural groups.

The guns are needed as a doctrine of “mutually assured destruction” to stop any one group openly trying to dominate another by force.

However, I have never been against the use of firearms for shooting for sport or even hunting for food (even in this country), and I feel that controlled and disciplined use of firearms in a sporting/leisure situation (but not killing animals merely for enjoyment) is an acceptable way of getting rid of aggression

I think there definitely needs to be a review on how and when firearms can be carried within normal social situations, and that people with certain mental illnesses should not have firearms licenses.

Also, I do not think guns should be allowed in most parts of any campus of education as feelings always run high amongst youths – there is always the danger of these guns being used in anger to settle petty disputes.

However I don’t see why there could not be a range on campus where the students could have supervised target practice, but any guns they bring in must remain in secure safes in that range and should never be brought into the other areas of that building.

its not merely just being “allowed” to have guns which is America’s problem.

it is the mindset amongst “angry young men” that it is acceptable to kill another citizen to prove your own point which is the problem in that country (and some others), particularly those which have been “colonised” by US neo-imperialism.

A level of private firearm ownership is permitted in many other European countries, but there isn’t so much of a culture that you have the gun for self-defence from another human unless you are in a really extreme situation, in many cases its merely for target practice or hunting….

I think it might be more a problem with social inequality; if someone thinks they are a loser and can never win in life, they can at least make others lose by shooting them…

So why were there no effective checkpoints, gatehouses or metal detectors?

Its no good having a rule without enforcement. If you are going to try and keep out guns from an area in a country where lots of people have them, this job needs to be done properly, its literally a matter of life and death. They mostly manage to keep guns out of airports in that country, so why not in college campuses?

Clearly he was able to defeat any security measures, and all this despite being known to college authorities as mentally unstable (I think in Britain such a person would be in a secure unit rather than on the street).

Isn’t this the same country where on-campus cops tazered some kid for not producing college ID? I thought security on campus was supposed to be “robust”.

A 6 foot tall Oriental/Asian person stands out anyway, few people of that ethnicity are that tall…Do they not have CCTV and rentaguards?

OK it might be argued that this “turns the college into a prison” but thats the price of allowing the guns to be freely carried elsewhere, and there is sense in searching for knifes and other weaponry anyway in some colleges. Even in the UK, anti-weapon defences such as gates, checkpoints, searches, existed even in London colleges in 1991, long before any of the more recent hysteria over teenage violence.

I doubt it – the shooter may have been mad but not stupid.

I suspect his anger was such that if he knew he would encounter armed resistance there, he would probably have swapped his pistol for a rifle instead and taken a different (i.e “sniper style” shooting position) out of the range of others’ pistols or used an IED, both potentially causing more casualties.

I don’t think that the USA can ever eliminate gun ownership completely but it needs a change in their societies attitudes.

BTW did you know the FBI deal with a bomb nearly every day in America, most of these are nothing to do with terrorism but merely people who know one another settling various disputes?