the reason it happens in America

[JJY]

“I think the reason it happens in America … you can go into a supermarket and get powerful automatic weapons …. along with a culture that makes gun ownership seem normal.”

This was printed in the Washington Post today - from a British newspaper.

 

[ATW525]

I must be shopping at the wrong supermarket...

 

[ballistic gelatin]

The reason he was able to kill so many people is because there were no other armed students to stop him. Heck, a proficient handgunner with a .22 caliber pistol could quite possibly have stopped this guy!

 

[Beatnik]

I agree with the crowd that says that it happened simply because we live in a culture that indoctrinates our citizens to not fight back.

In that respect, and considering the recent debacle with its sailors, Britain has no room to talk.

 

[patentmike]

This list is from Aljazeera. Apparently they are more objective than the Washington Post! (although they did leave out the school in Chechnya)

December 1989 - Marc Lepine shot dead 14 women in Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique.

August 1966 - Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire at the University of Texas, killing 16 people before police killed him.

March 1996 - Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and their teacher at a school in Dunblane in Scotland.

March 1997 - Mohammad Ahman al-Naziri killed six children and two staff during attacks on two schools in Sanaa, Yemen.

April 1999 - Two students killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in the United States.

February 2002 - A former student thrown out of trade school shot dead three people in Freising, Germany

April 2002 - Eighteen people died when a former student opened fire at a high school in Erfurt, Germany after being expelled.

 

[NavyLCDR]

ATF - Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Obviously the name of American supermarkets, not a governmental regulatory agency!

or BATF - Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms - the chest of drawers in my dining room


and of course the British newspaper is absolutely correct, AUTOMATIC weapons are easily obtainable in America - it's those darn semi-auto's and single shots that are so hard to come by....

 

[SteveS]

According to Der Spiegel (sp.?), the Brits have it all wrong. You can buy machine guns on street corners in the US, not supermarkets. Idiots.

 

[LeibstandarteAdH]

CNN reporter just stated that a "nine milimeter and a twenty two milimeter hangun were recovered from the scene" never heard of a 22mm semi-automatic handgun.....

 

[romma]

Gun ownership should be, and is normal here. That's how we stopped the British...

 

[Cosmoline]

Where can I buy a 22mm?

 

[whited]

.

The Brits I talk to all seem to share very simplistic, almost child-like views
on the topic of guns. It seems the ability of our cousins across the pond
to think critically has disappeared, along with their sense of morality and
their personal rights. A shame.

 

[ptmmatssc]

no amount of gun control will ever prevent such a tragedy.

If the culprit couldn't get a gun legally or ilegally they would have used other weapons, homemade explosives, springs to mind or a little knowledge as pointed out by an earlier poster prolly found on the internet instructions on how to build a fire arm from a basic rifle upto a fully auto sub machine gun. Its all out there to be learn't.

Heck i cannot even get onto a soapbox about how much better the UK is at gun control over the US with our out right ban on handguns, as we still have people getting shot on a regular basis. And our children are killing each other with knives in the streets of London.

Posted in another forum from a chap across the pond . Some of them still get it .

 

[Zero_DgZ]

Fallacy. It happens everywhere, but only affects us personally when it happens here.

 

[TexasRifleman]

Where can I buy a 22mm?

Well that's a .70 caliber roughly.

If you buy one can I come watch you shoot it?

 

[thedpp]

They are lying to the American people.. people that aren't educated about guns should not do news stories about guns. We should email and mail them and point out EVERY mistake they make on TV that should stop em.

 

[Mannix]

This is a load of crap. Why do people who no nothing about guns whatsoever insist on blaming the gun laws? To begin with, what supermarket does he shop at? I've seen to many and all I've seen are knives and the occasional low powered airsoft gun(at least around here).

As for the effectiveness often cited with the near total ban of firearms in the UK, with the exception of murder and rape, they top us by a considerable amount. In fact, you are 6 times more likely to get mugged on the streets of London than the streets of New York. Roughly half of the burglaries occur when the homeowner is home, whereas in the US, only 13 percent happen when the homeowner is home, mainly because homeowners are far more likely to own a gun in the US.

Sticking with the New York-London comparison, though New York's murder rate is nearly 6 times higher than London's, it has been like that for nearly 200 years, and crime rates in both cities actually spiked whenever gun control laws were enacted. When you lower gun ownership rates, you get drops in accidental firearms deaths, but to disarm law abiding citizens for this reason is tantamount to calling them idiots who cannot be trusted to use a gun safely.

 

[Geronimo45]

22mm's close to the size of a 12-gauge... or is it a 10-gauge? It's .86 or so.