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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Dec 14, 2012 - 03:45pm PT
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Cragman wrote: Bob, our society did not have the influences during the depression that it does today.
Can you understand that?
yes I can...I also understand that saying the world needs "more love" isn't going to change this situation. Start with good parenting, good education, good healthcare and sensible gun laws and we might see less of these crimes in the future.
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Dec 14, 2012 - 03:45pm PT
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Locker writes:
"If the crazy dude accepted Jesus as his savior at the time of death...
he get's a free ride to HEAVEN...
Right???..."
Not with a Permanent Record like this guy has he doesn't.
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Brandon-
climber
The Granite State.
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Dec 14, 2012 - 03:46pm PT
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Easy, lets get this back on topic. I'm guilty of dragging it down too.
This is a very tragic event. Lets show some respect to those involved by having a civil discussion.
I, for one, was shocked to the core upon hearing this and was posting in real time, as I heard details on the radio. I had a minute to decompress and, well, feel a little more rational now.
I walked over to my grandmas house, gave her a hug, and told her I love her. Therapy.
Maybe I should turn the radio off.
Carry on.
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10b4me
Boulder climber
Somewhere on 395
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Dec 14, 2012 - 03:49pm PT
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Sure, there are too many mentally ill people out there that do these kinds of acts.....but again, you push someone hard enough...someone raised on a good dose of violent media....they will respond in kind.
Cragman, Locker doesn't seem to get that.
The Aurora shooter quit school because he wasn't making the grades. It pissed him off
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Dec 14, 2012 - 03:51pm PT
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"The National Rifle Association goes to great lengths (and spends a huge sum of money) to defend the right to bear arms. It is opposed to virtually every form of gun control, including restrictions on owning assault weapons, background checks for gun owners, and registration of firearms.
NRA’s influence is felt not only through campaign contributions, but through millions of dollars in off-the-books spending on issue ads and the like. Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the NRA supported proposals to arm airline pilots with guns. Between 2001 and 2010, the NRA spent between $1.5 million and $2.7 million on federal-level lobbying efforts. During the 2010 election cycle, the NRA spent more than $7.2 million on independent expenditures at the federal level -- messages that advocate for or against political candidates. These messages primarily supported Republican candidates or opposed Democratic candidates."
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Snowmassguy
Trad climber
Calirado
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Dec 14, 2012 - 03:52pm PT
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Really looking forward to explaining this to my children tonight. I find it really difficult to put any sort of perspective on crap like this. It does not help that I will be walking down
the halls of Columbine HS this and most weekends with my kids as they play games in the gym. I consider myself a good father but really have trouble talking to kids about this sort of insanity.
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bergbryce
Mountain climber
California
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Dec 14, 2012 - 03:52pm PT
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Six months from now there will be another mass shooting, then another and everyone will say the same things they are saying now. These shootings have become so damn' commonplace we just accept them.
Watch, not a damn' thing will change except we'll start installing more metal detectors at schools. Brilliant.
This nation has a serious problem and we do nothing about it. Maybe because we don't really know the source or what to do?
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Bob D'A
Trad climber
Taos, NM
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Dec 14, 2012 - 03:55pm PT
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10b wrote: Cragman, Locker doesn't seem to get that.
The Aurora shooter quit school because he wasn't making the grades. It pissed him off
Yes and normal mentality stable students go out and kill when they get a failing grade.
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Ksolem
Trad climber
Monrovia, California
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Dec 14, 2012 - 03:59pm PT
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In 1991 there were 24,700 murders committed in the U.S.
Over the following 20 years the number of murders in the U.S. has steadily dropped by more than 10,000, to 14,612 in 2011.
At the same time, violent crime stats rose in 2011 for the first time in 20 years. This was driven by a 17% increase in simple and aggravated assaults, as the murder rate continued to drop.
(stats from Christian Science Monitor.)
So to be clear, the series of horrendous mass killings of recent is not part of an overall trend of increased violence in the U.S.
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Seamstress
Trad climber
Yacolt, WA
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Dec 14, 2012 - 04:00pm PT
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Time for me to get back to work. I can't fix what is wrong. The human impact can easily get lost in the cause celebre. Lots of little kids lost their innocence today. Many parents who toiled hard to move to the suburbs and provide a safe environment for their children found that violence knows no boudaries.
I still remember the impact of the home invasion of the Petit house in Cheshire, CT. All these acts of violence chip away at our souls, make it difficult to treat each other kindly, makes us defensive and change the basic way we treat each other. I remember going home that year for CHristmas to find more relatives actually locking their doors - something we never did before 2007.
We can't turn the clock back to the innocence of the American spirit pre-911. These children will remember this day very profoundly. It isn't one in a string of violent events for them. Their parents did all that they could to provide their kids with the best start in life. Now reality is distorted to the bad side.
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10b4me
Boulder climber
Somewhere on 395
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Dec 14, 2012 - 04:04pm PT
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"The National Rifle Association goes to great lengths (and spends a huge sum of money) to defend the right to bear arms
I wonder what Wayne LaPierre would say if his children had been murdered?
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John M
climber
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Dec 14, 2012 - 04:05pm PT
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Why would he answer you locker? What do you hope to accomplish by getting your answer? It seems clear that you think you know the answer, so what do you hope to gain?
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Seamstress
Trad climber
Yacolt, WA
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Dec 14, 2012 - 04:07pm PT
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Thanks for pointing out that the overall murders is lower. In this day of instant news and huge publicity, we can be overwhelmed by the negative.
WML - Home. 13 years away, it is still home. Hope all of your family is safe - but in a state with 169 towns, many of them small, we all feel so closely connected.
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John M
climber
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Dec 14, 2012 - 04:08pm PT
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You are talking on an open forum..
I have a question for you. What do you hope to gain from Dean?
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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Dec 14, 2012 - 04:09pm PT
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This world simply needs more love.
+1 Dean.
The incredible gut wrenching deep loss bottomless pit grief happening in those families is beyond most of our comprehension.
Can we find a few things to agree on, please?
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John M
climber
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Dec 14, 2012 - 04:11pm PT
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An answer...
It's WHY I asked a question...
Seems like a lame reason to me and unlikely your real reason.
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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Dec 14, 2012 - 04:12pm PT
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Thoughts written by a friend of my cousin. It was about the Colorado shooting but maybe worth sharing:
I know very little but suspect a lot about the universe and life. I do know that no where in the genetic code is a recipe for a man who has so abandoned his soul, that he kills strangers and children under the cloak of night and tear gas. No beautiful infant born is destined to become that man. Yet, such a man exists and such sorrow blankets these Rockies tonight. I know such a man is made, not created.
We could spend hours discussing why he should not have had access to guns, but rather, we should each look at our world and wonder how does a beautiful infantile mound of 6 pounds of flesh, bones, and blood become such a man. How does our world make such a weapon, as he? We can blame so much, but we can only change the parts we control. We can scream about parents, guns, and schools, perhaps rightly so, but if we want to extinguish such eves of loss like tonight, we must each examine ourself and what we add to this fire of rage that should not exist. We each must inspect where we direct the precious piece of the universe's energy we govern.
Each time we begin our day in anger rather than love, we add more to the critical mass that explodes in gunfire and sorrow. Each time we find our day, beliefs, and life more important than others, we add another round to the madman's belt. Each moment where we use the back of another man to raise ourselves, rather than help him stand, we etch another name on a tombstone. We create such violent beings with millions of insults to our collective humanity. We each pull the trigger by creating a world that celebrates violence, stands in awe massacres , and does not take care of those who are hungry, poor, suffering, and in despair.
I know that if we each allow our days to be ruled by love, let compassion be our compass, and connection be our destination then nights like tonight will only be populated by stars, rather than the mourning screams of those left behind.
My heart goes out to those who must make sense of such violence in order to understand the vacancy left in their world today. May we honor those, whose glorious potential will never be realized, by removing hate, anger, and disdain from our lives and thus shift the finite balance of our collective energy towards rapture rather than rage.
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John M
climber
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Dec 14, 2012 - 04:12pm PT
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Can we find a few things to agree on, please?
Sometimes you have to clear the air first before agreements can be reached.
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John M
climber
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Dec 14, 2012 - 04:14pm PT
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Thats cool Locker. I'm glad that you are sincere. I see too many people just wanting a certain answer so that they can attack and make themselves right. Not many just really want to understand.
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philo
Trad climber
Is that light the end of the tunnel or a train?
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Dec 14, 2012 - 04:14pm PT
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/14/nine-facts-about-guns-and-mass-shootings-in-the-united-states/
Eleven facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States
Posted by Ezra Klein on December 14, 2012 at 2:07 pm
When we first collected much of this data, it was after the Aurora, Colo. shootings, and the air was thick with calls to avoid “politicizing” the tragedy. That is code, essentially, for “don’t talk about reforming our gun control laws.”
Let’s be clear: That is a form of politicization. When political actors construct a political argument that threatens political consequences if other political actors pursue a certain political outcome, that is, almost by definition, a politicization of the issue. It’s just a form of politicization favoring those who prefer the status quo to stricter gun control laws.
Since then, there have been more horrible, high-profile shootings. Jovan Belcher, a linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs, took his girlfriend’s life and then his own. In Oregon, Jacob Tyler Roberts entered a mall holding a semi-automatic rifle and yelling “I am the shooter.” And, in Connecticut, at least 27 are dead — including 18 children — after a man opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it.
Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. But that’s unacceptable. As others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t “too soon.” It’s much too late.
What follows here isn’t a policy agenda. It’s simply a set of facts — many of which complicate a search for easy answers — that should inform the discussion that we desperately need to have.
1. Shooting sprees are not rare in the United States.
Mother Jones has tracked and mapped every shooting spree in the last three decades. “Since 1982, there have been at least 61 mass murders carried out with firearms across the country, with the killings unfolding in 30 states from Massachusetts to Hawaii,” they found. And in most cases, the killers had obtained their weapons legally:
2. Eleven of the 20 worst mass shootings in the last 50 years took place in the United States.
Time has the full list here. In second place is Finland, with two entries.
3. Lots of guns don’t necessarily mean lots of shootings, as you can see in Israel and Switzerland.
As David Lamp writes at Cato, “In Israel and Switzerland, for example, a license to possess guns is available on demand to every law-abiding adult, and guns are easily obtainable in both nations. Both countries also allow widespread carrying of concealed firearms, and yet, admits Dr. Arthur Kellerman, one of the foremost medical advocates of gun control, Switzerland and Israel ‘have rates of homicide that are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those in the United States.’”
4. Of the 11 deadliest shootings in the US, five have happened from 2007 onward.
That doesn’t include Friday’s shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. The AP put the early reported death toll at 27, which would make it the second-deadliest mass shooting in US history.
5. America is an unusually violent country. But we’re not as violent as we used to be.
Kieran Healy, a sociologist at Duke University, made this graph of “deaths due to assault” in the United States and other developed countries. We are a clear outlier.
As Healy writes, “The most striking features of the data are (1) how much more violent the U.S. is than other OECD countries (except possibly Estonia and Mexico, not shown here), and (2) the degree of change—and recently, decline—there has been in the U.S. time series considered by itself.”
6. The South is the most violent region in the United States.
In a subsequent post, Healy drilled further into the numbers and looked at deaths due to assault in different regions of the country. Just as the United States is a clear outlier in the international context, the South is a clear outlier in the national context:
7. Gun ownership in the United States is declining overall.
“For all the attention given to America’s culture of guns, ownership of firearms is at or near all-time lows,” writes political scientist Patrick Egan. The decline is most evident on the General Social Survey, though it also shows up on polling from Gallup, as you can see on this graph:
The bottom line, Egan writes, is that “long-term trends suggest that we are in fact currently experiencing a waning culture of guns and violence in the United States. “
8. More guns tend to mean more homicide.
The Harvard Injury Control Research Center assessed the literature on guns and homicide and found that there’s substantial evidence that indicates more guns means more murders. This holds true whether you’re looking at different countries or different states. Citations here.
9. States with stricter gun control laws have fewer deaths from gun-related violence.
Last year, economist Richard Florida dove deep into the correlations between gun deaths and other kinds of social indicators. Some of what he found was, perhaps, unexpected: Higher populations, more stress, more immigrants, and more mental illness were not correlated with more deaths from gun violence. But one thing he found was, perhaps, perfectly predictable: States with tighter gun control laws appear to have fewer gun-related deaths. The disclaimer here is that correlation is not causation. But correlations can be suggestive:
“The map overlays the map of firearm deaths above with gun control restrictions by state,” explains Florida. “It highlights states which have one of three gun control restrictions in place – assault weapons’ bans, trigger locks, or safe storage requirements. Firearm deaths are significantly lower in states with stricter gun control legislation. Though the sample sizes are small, we find substantial negative correlations between firearm deaths and states that ban assault weapons (-.45), require trigger locks (-.42), and mandate safe storage requirements for guns (-.48).”
10. Gun control, in general, has not been politically popular.
Since 1990, Gallup has been asking Americans whether they think gun control laws should be stricter. The answer, increasingly, is that they don’t. “The percentage in favor of making the laws governing the sale of firearms ‘more strict’ fell from 78% in 1990 to 62% in 1995, and 51% in 2007,” reports Gallup. “In the most recent reading, Gallup in 2010 found 44% in favor of stricter laws. In fact, in 2009 and again last year, the slight majority said gun laws should either remain the same or be made less strict.”
11. But particular policies to control guns often are.
An August CNN/ORC poll asked respondents whether they favor or oppose a number of specific policies to restrict gun ownership. And when you drill down to that level, many policies, including banning the manufacture and possession of semi-automatic rifles, are popular.
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