BREAKING: Four Dead in Arizona College Shooting

Yeah...in Oz, we had a mature-age student who for some obscure reason had a need to own SEVEN handguns and decided to take 4 of them to school for show-and-tell.
Needless to say, it was a blast...

The price society pays for liberal gun ownership is unwarranted mass shootings and serial murder.
Like fast-food and grease....
Y'all have to live with it, hear?...

The FBI released a report of violent crime in America. A summary from CNN is at http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/10/28/fbi.crime.report.ap/index.html

Violent crime in America increased this year, for the first time in more than ten years. Does anyone have comparable facts about crime in other parts of the world?

I'm the wrong person to go griping about gun ownership to.

I have a rifle and two handguns I bought off the street.

Have you ever thought that if you outlaw guns only outlaws will have guns?

Honestly though, I wouldn't balk too much if handguns were restricted, but not rifles.

In my 50+ years I've undergone two unprovoked, serious attacks while broken down with my car 40 miles from nowhere.
Crew 1: 4 men ( 2 recent prison parolees), broken whiskey bottles, stated intent to kill me for being wrong race (1969). Crew 2: 3 men, baseball bat and a tire iron (1981). On both occasions my producing a gun aborted the attack, and sent the attackers fleeing in their vehicles. No shots necessary, no shots fired. I believe that there has to be some resonable control of who can legally own a gun, but I shudder when I consider what my fate would have been had I not had one.

PS - crew 1 got caught 24 hours later, crew 2 is still out there somewhere.

I've only ever witnessed two violent attacks, both involved punches being thrown. But then I do live in a country where there are no guns and any gun related violence makes national headlines because it's so rare. I suppose I aught to consider myself lucky that I'm able to walk around late at night on my own and feel safe considering what happens in other countries.

I got my guns after 17 cars and 11 houses were torched in my neighborhood (3 of the cars belonged to close neighbors) and a guest at my house had all the windows in his van smashed.

2 handguns bought off the street?
Nice to see a law abiding citizen going about his business ... and how can the usual (if it can be termed as such) 'school' shooting be labelled a copycat crime in coparison to the Washington sniper killings?

Oops! "Comparison"

I bought them off the street because I want to the government to know as little about me as possible. Mostly a lost cause, but I try when I can. Besides the guns I bought on the street were well under $50 each, cheaper than you can get in a store.

Actually, I was calling it a copycat shooting after all the other school shootings that have happened recently.

Wombat/Jafo - Please take a minute and give us a brief overview concerning state of control of gun ownership in Oz. Must profess complete ignorance in that regard, and really would like to know. Thanks.

BTW, when I say recently, I still think of Colombine as recent. I was a senior in HS then and it had a big impact on me, especially sinc there were 2 guys in another school in my school district were caught only a day or so before they were going to do the same thing. That, plus well over 30 bomb threats that year in the school district (a couple times bombs were acutally found).

My basic view guns is that education is the most important factor in preventing gun deaths, second is putting guns away where children can't get to them (such as safes), third is background checks to ensure that criminals and people with restraining orders can't get guns legally (of course many will still get them illegally, but not all will), and public campaigns promoting alternative ways of solving domestic problems aside from pulling out a gun and shooting the spouse.

since, not sinc

I really screwed up my grammar that time.

Our aussies get the most out of the equine population by beating the dead ones, over and over and over...

We need that misspelling icon made public

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I used to wake up screaming and in a cold sweat. I would be overcome with an apocalyptic feeling, as if the world had just ended. This lasted for many months........

....then I stopped watching the nightly news.

Two big problems in America really fry me:
Gun manufacturers ship obscenely large quantities of guns to private citizens with a Federal Firearms License with no questions asked as to how and where so many hundreds of guns are being sold.
People who consistently claim their 2nd Amendment rights, but almost never will allocate money and floor space for a heavy gun safe. >

BKB...access to firearms in Oz is clearly significantly more difficult than in the US. God knows how this Chinese eff-wit got his 7 handguns but perhaps we can deport him back to China where he'll have a bigger population to get uptight with...

After Port Arthur, tighter controls were brought in for high-powered and/or auto-loading rifles, but somehow handguns seem to have missed the focus of the surrendering amnesty/ buy-out....but that is soon to change.

I see absolutely no lawfull motive/reason for owning 7 handguns.....you 'may' be able to argue one, if you ever really imagined that it 'can' protect you.
One is maybe defensive....7 is/can only be offensive, as proven.

Australia [thankfully] does NOT have some ridiculous 'right' to bear arms...equating to almost more guns in private ownership in Yankeeland than there are humans in Yankeeland...

The US appears to have a fixation with the nostalgia of the Wild, wild West.....run out of Injuns to kill, but what the heck, wait long enough and someone will piss you off enough to justify some social justice brain-splattering...

It's a waste of time 'convincing' our Us brethren of their inherent folly.

Remember the phrase...."Live by the sword....."

Think about it next time you're at a gun show, planning to upgrade to a newer, shinier.....sword....

whaddya know, a true believer

I have absolutely no problem with hunting rifles, I'm not too fond of hunting, but they aren't much of a factor in crime. Handguns are what I'm uneasy about, I consider more than 2 (except for purposes of collecting classic guns) to be intended for offensive action. I got my number 2 from one for the house and one for the car which is what I have.

Of course, I'll get rid of the car gun and lock the house handgun in a good safe when I have children. The rifle will simply be mounted way up where only adults can reach. And of course, I'll be very careful to educate my children about guns, after all, children who know how to handle guns are statistically least likely to be involved in a gun incident.

Actually, children who know how to handle guns would be statistically less likely to miss when their childish impulses outweigh their as-yet unformed maturity and social conscience.

Ah, but much better a clean kill...

My idea of 'sport' is to shoot barbs of derision at those who promote gun ownership...

Darn it, there's too many guns out there, time to get me an Abrams...or a Merkava....that's a neat little gizmo, too...

[wish dad hadn't given away my 1912 Lee Enfield, though.....would have looked good plugged and over the mantel piece]...

Jafo - as per "Live by the sword..." - if you read upward several more posts, you'll see that is precisely what I did. I decided that living by the "sword" beat being eviscerated with broken whiskey bottles by 3 racist %#^$s while the fourth pinned my arms behind my back. Perhaps I should have been more altruistic about the big picture, tossed my gun away, and should have opted to "take one for the greater good of a holier gunfree society"? That would have looked really good as an epitaph on my tombstone! You're right - you'll never convince us, and if I wind up dying by means of a gun you certainly won't hear me comlain about it.

Jafo, the statistic about children and guns is a hard and long known fact.

Children who have been taught about guns (not just told to stay away from them) have the lowest numbers of gun injuries as a class compared to all children. In addition, children who are taught to use guns have an even lower injury rate.

I was taught to use a gun at age 8 and I know a lot of people who were taught at younger ages. Only one person I know who was taught about guns at an early age has ever been injured by one, and he was shot by another hunter who was careless. I know and respect guns, education is the answer, not banning them.

Do you guys at least get to use pocketknives?

I was a member of a Rifle Club in secondary school....12 to 17 years old....and taught other children how to shoot....that's open range target shooting, not taking pot-shots at kids in classrooms...
I know I'll never accidently shoot myself for two very good and not mutually exclusive reasons.
1. I know how to handle a rifle/gun.
and
2. I DO NOT have one.

As for pocketknives, they, too will be controlled.
A concealed weapon of ANY sort is not a 'good thing'.

Fortunately for those of us NOT in the US, high-risk occupations like Bullion/cash transportation, Policing, etc. require gun-carrying, but for those in the US, just BEING in the US 'appears' to be a high-risk occupation...