BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Raptor
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 11:09 PM

Guns Kill People end of fucking story!

"I'm not a gun guy but I'd shoot Charleton Heston if I could" - Fred Eaglesmith.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 08:38 PM

I agree enthusiastically with what you say about handguns, Mick. I was only making the implication that they should probably be regulated a bit more stringently than long guns.

"What leads to crime is a plethora of societal and economic factors. Acting out on those issues leads to crime."

Exactly. I agree 100%.

There are certain societal factors in the USA, mostly based on its past history, social development, and traditions, that seem to create a good deal more per capita gun crime than in many other countries (Canada included). We've been over that ground before in other threads.

But no place, obviously, is immune to this sort of thing happening. We just had an incident in Canada the other day with an alienated young guy that shot innocent bystanders, and then himself, apparently for no other reason than that he was very alienated against society.

I'm not a bit surprised there are a lot of people out there who feel that way. Not a bit. I AM surprised when their feelings drive them so far as to shoot at other people, though.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Scoville
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 08:38 PM

Actually, among the ten biggest cities in the U.S., three of the five that have the highest violent crime rates are in Texas, which, as we all know, does not have restrictive gun laws (Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston). I think NYC is #10 (safest of the top 10 biggest cities).

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Big Mick
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 08:26 PM

Wordy, my understanding is that ever since Great Britain moved to take guns out of the hands of ordinary folks a few years back, the violent crime rate has gone up, as has the incidence of illegal use of guns in crime.

I have handguns, LH. I have never used them illegally, nor have they ever left my home illegally. My children have all been trained to use them, and they have all been trained to never get near them, or bring them out around friends. They are double locked, that is they are locked in a safe place, and have triger locks on them at all times. None of my children choose to own guns or have them in their homes. Fair enough, and good for them.

The size of a hangun does not lead to crime. That is a bogus contention. What leads to crime is a plethora of societal and economic factors. Acting out on those issues leads to crime. How one commits it, usually includes an illegally obtained gun. All data indicates that prohibition simply disarms legal owners and creates a huge blackmarket for illegal weapons.

The shooting of these innocents is a tragedy. Nothing more, and nothing less. It has nothing to do with gun laws, and everything to do with a sad, sick man determined to right what he saw as an old wrong.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 07:35 PM

That's just it, Divis. It never crossed my mind that a gun would make me the same "size" as the next guy. I didn't feel that way at all. I just didn't relate to guns that way, I didn't want guns for that purpose, and my uncle clearly didn't either. I realize that some people do, though....unfortunately.

To put it another way: I knew some young men who carried knives to intimidate other people. I have always carried a knive (swiss army knife). What for? To trim my fingernails, open envelopes, cut string with, open stuck things with, do modelcraft with, etc...

You follow?

It's the psychology behind acquiring and using anything that is vital, not the tool itself. The same goes for the use of money, as a matter of fact. It can be used for great good or great harm.

Handguns are a bit different matter than long guns, though, I'll admit that. A handgun's uses are pretty obvious:

1. target shooting
2. shooting another human being

And a handgun is easy to conceal. That lends its use to crime, naturally. Well, you can say the same for a knife, can't you?

I hate to think what the families of those kids are going through tonight.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: GUEST, Ebbie
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 07:34 PM

I agree with Rapaire- these people will forgive and pray for the gunman. And they will refuse to install any sort of surveillance on the property or metal detectors. Amish try to combat evil with trust and goodness.

As for *why* this kind of thing is happening these days, does anyone remember 'Future Shock' and other books with similar themes? This kind of thing has been foretold.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 07:24 PM

I think it'll be a long long time before people in the UK start wanting more guns in private hands.

About the same time the Amish start choosing to carry guns - and even in the face of this horrible targedy, I don't see that happening.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 07:19 PM

One subject I am not getting into is guns. Taking a gun of a man is the easy bit, taking his reason to use it away is another matter.

The gun makes everyone the same size, sadly it makes some think they are bigger.
Many here have views on gun control laws. Obtaining an illegal gun is as easy as obtaining illegal drugs, there will always be a market to answer needs of man.

If the guy was mad lets say, he could have walked into that school and thrown acid into peoples faces, or slashed children across faces and hands with a craft knife.

We will never be able to offer anything only understanding and support to the poor families tonight who are asking that simple question,
WHY ?

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 06:43 PM

Well, my uncle loved guns and used them all his life. He never once shot at a human being or had any wish to. He was a model citizen. I loved guns when I was a kid and a young adult. I never once shot at a human being or had any wish to. (I shot at targets, tin cans, toy soldiers, and a few bugs, mostly locusts...because they were very hard to sneak up on and get a clear shot at before they would fly off.) There are many, many people who are completely responsible and nonviolent gunowners. They should not be demonized or penalized due to public hysteria. Country people traditionally tended to have guns for a variety of reasons, some of them quite practical, and that is still the case in rural areas that border on wilderness. You can't just judge people on the basis of stereotypes, you have to look at each situation on its own merits.

I never thought much about the gun as a self-defence weapon, I thought about it as I would think about archery, ping-pong, or flying a kite...meaning, I found target shooting and the gun itself interesting simply for its own sake, because of how it functioned and the skill or finesse demanded in using it accurately. I didn't see the gun as a way of empowering myself in regards to other people.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: GUEST,wordy
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 06:38 PM

Guns, guns, guns. They're coming here to the UK now and we'll follow your path no doubt. Next we'll arm all the police, then we'll start demanding that we can buy our own for "protection"..and so on, down the slippery slope from the nation we once were to the nation the US is. Very sad, but inevitable I feel.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Greg F.
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 06:33 PM

Thanks, Charlton. My regards to Michael Moore.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: GUEST
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 06:26 PM

Highest crime rates involving guns in the U.S. are in the cities with the most restrictive gun laws. Chicago, NYC. Disarm the good people, and the bad ones will still have guns.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Greg F.
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 06:19 PM

yup. Guns don't kill people; Milkmen kill people.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 06:03 PM

I'd say, Lilyfestre, that they felt free to have "fun" in that way because they saw the homeless man as having no worth in the eyes of society...therefore in their view it didn't matter what they did to him, and "no one would care anyway". On top of that, they were looking for cheap "thrills", no doubt, and looking for a sense of personal power. (many teenagers feel powerless, for a great variety of reasons) I can remember any number of teenagers that were equally cruel when I was in school, but they restricted their cruelty to safer things like bullying other students, torturing frogs, shooting birds with BB guns, torturing cats, that sort of thing. They weren't bold enough or so completely lacking in the awareness of real and consequences as to chance killing another human being.

You have to be in a colossally dull and unaware state of mind to do something like that, or you have to be incredible alienated and hostile. I knew a lot like that too. Some of them (probably most of them) did not have a good home life at all. Some had alcoholic fathers who beat them and their mothers pretty routinely, although it tended to remain a secret most of the time in those days.

I'd say that among the teenage boys I grew up around there were a good 15 or 20% who were basically mean enough to kill an old tramp, and definitely sadistic enough, but none of them were quite stupid enough to go as far as to murder someone. Not at that age, anyway. I'm sure some of them managed it at a later age. I have not seen any of them since graduation.

It's usually males who commit such acts. Almost never females. One good reason right there for giving women a whole lot more power in society, as far as I'm concerned. I don't trust patriarchal systems one bit. (and I'm male)

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 05:44 PM

These incidents all come down to the mental state of the perpetrator.

How do you identify people who are capable of such crimes? It seems impossible to me.

I remember the shooting at a Scottish school some ten years back. Seventeen killed at an elementary school in Dunblane.
Several incidents in Canada. Eight elementary school students killed in Osaka, Japan. An assault rifle used in Yemen. More killed in Germany, at a high school.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: LilyFestre
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 05:35 PM

All of this makes me think of something I saw on the news last night, a rising of violence (many killed) against homeless people. There was a man sleeping in the woods and 3 teen boys beat him, went back and beat him more while the old man begged them to stop and then went back a third time and beat him to death with a 2x4 with nails in it. The question for that is the same as the question for these shootings..WHY? WHY IN GOD'S NAME WOULD ANYONE DO SUCH A THING?????? The response of the 3 teen boys who murdered the homeless man said, "For fun." That gives me goosebumps just thinking about it.

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 05:13 PM

Truthfully, I'm very much afraid of the day when one of these people realizes that a public library ALSO has people and children in it. (It's been done too, but hardly any publicity accompanied the acts and I'm NOT talking about the recent pipe bomb in Salt Lake City PL.)

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 05:12 PM

I'd say no question about it, Bill. No question at all.

Now consider this. If you have a federal administration that would like to raise the general public's paranoia and their desire for "protection" to the point where the government can readily legislate and bring in what amounts to a heavily controlled society (meaning a police state...), then every one of these unfortunate incidents plays right into its hands...and the more the compliant media focus on the horrors, the quicker the administration can advance its agenda.

Rule through fear. Divide and conquer. Expand your civil powers. Cancel your traditional civil rights in favor of "security". Regulate, imprison, and control. It's been done before.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 04:55 PM

This guy left notes which showed he had 'unusual' mental problems...Not nearly the same as some of the other school incidents, but I wonder if the intense publicity the media give these things now make people think of 'schools' to take out their rage.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: katlaughing
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 04:46 PM

DavetheAM, my dad used to say that if folks knew the teachers were armed there would be no violence in school. I think that may have been a truism of his times, but there is no way it would be true for today. There's just too much that could go wrong, judgement, direction, guns i the hands of curious students, etc. Stun guns might be another thing, though.

I am sad, but most of all I feel angry. Angry at the state of our country; at the fear-mongers and those of us who are not marching in the streets demanding their ouster; at the pry-their-cold-fingers gun nuts (I KNOW not all are so!) and, angry that violence has become the ONLY percieved solution for some folks' problems.

May all the children feel safe and be safe forevermore.

Mitakuye Oyasin,

kat

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Wesley S
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 04:06 PM

Dave - The gunman shot himself too. I can't see that armed Amish in this case would have changed anything. When the gunman wants to die - what's to stop him?

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Scoville
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 03:09 PM

The guy sounds like he had some mental issues, but who knows? I suppose we'll find out on the news tonight.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Rapparee
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 03:09 PM

Without getting into a 2d Amendment debate, I will point out a few things. These are based upon living and working for 28+ years in Amish country in Ohio and Indiana.

The Amish eschew violence and all possible contact with the police and government. Mostly they want to the left alone to live their own lives and worship in their own way.

"Amish" is not a race or a nationality or even a way of life. It is a way of life based upon religious beliefs, and these are so closely interwoven that they can (and do) laugh at themselves.

There are degrees of Amishness. Some even own cars (albeit without chrome and with black bumpers). They do use modern conveniences, including electricity, automobiles, airplanes, and trains, when it is convenient and thrifty to do so. For example, if you tenant-farmed your electrified farm to an Amish family they would not require you to remove the electricity because fo their beliefs -- they would use it.
Likewise an Amishman will fly somewhere if that is the most economical way to travel (although he might not like it!).

And until an Amishman is "churched" there is no more prohibition against a young man smoking, drinking, and getting into fights than any other young man of the same age. Once churched -- decided to enter the beliefs of the Anabaptist group called "Amish" -- he will foreswear these things (although a smoke and beer are often enjoyed, being considered "small sins").

This is a school shooting, a copy-cat of the one last week. I hope, from the bottom of my heart, that it's the last.

And by the way -- the Amish will pray for and forgive the shooter.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 02:59 PM

What drives them, Dave? A long history of stress, I imagine, combined with alienation and unexpressed anger, perhaps loneliness, a sense of persecution, a sense that they are not in control of their lives, and maybe a good big measure of despair. One day something snaps, they lose control completely, and they shoot somebody. Or they shoot themselves. Or both.

It doesn't exactly mean they're madmen in the clinical sense (although it is a mad act), it just means they lost it at some point.

Such things happen with animals too when they're under stress, and people are really a more complex form of animals. A normally well-behaved dog will suddenly run amuck one day and attack a child for no apparent reason. You hear about that often enough too.

I think that North American society has been under tremendous stress for the past few years, worse perhaps than ever before in our lives. Given that, and the influence of many games and video entertainment (which encourage violent fantasies) it's not too surprising these violent incidents are ocurring as often as they are these days.

And each time one of them does...and gets massive news coverage...it may, in fact, contribute quite a bit to inspiring the next one.

Do I have a solution? Yeah...but it would involve completely, utterly changing things from the top down in this society, and that is not going to happen. Too much money is at stake, and the people who are making it don't want to change what they're doing, they want to increase it.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Big Mick
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 02:57 PM

It's fine to say it, Giok, and if the numbers bore that out, I would agree with you. But they don't. There is more violent crime in the States with the most restrictive laws. And by a very large percentage, most of the violence is done with illegally obtained guns.

This is a horrible crime. When one reads the article, the perp is quoted as telling his wife that he was "he was getting revenge for something that happened 20 years ago". Sadly, even if he didn't have a gun, this type of mental obsession would have resulted in some form of deadly attack, with a knife or something.

God be good to these children. I am very sad for their families.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 02:51 PM

And conversely, if enough decent people were armed, there would be fewer of these incidents because of the consequences to the perpetrator. This is the first century where people put total trust in police to defend them; and accordingly one can never be safe in public.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 02:39 PM

I have always worried about the apparent American love affair with the right to bear arms, and find Chick Heston and the NRA's arguments facile and shallow.
I can't help but feel that were there less legally held guns in the US there would be less of these sad occurences. I know it's sort of stating the obvious, but I feel it needs saying.
Giok

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Sorcha
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 02:33 PM

What gnu said. Just tears.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Dave (the ancient mariner)
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 02:24 PM

Absolutely horrible situation there are so few words that could console these families. What drives people to commit such madness???

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: gnu
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 02:24 PM

Tears. Just tears.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Divis Sweeney
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 02:19 PM

So sad and to a people that bother nobody. Clearly a soft target. Third school shooting in the states within the last seven days. A lovely people who live a simple life, how will they come to terms with modern America.

Subject: RE: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 02:18 PM

CNN

Subject: BS: Amish shooting When is it going to end?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 02 Oct 06 - 01:44 PM

Another horror story from the US, when is it going to end, those lovely Amish children slaughtered by another madman, I visited Lancaster County nearly 40 years ago and admired those lovely people, it is depressing.