Students Killed in school shooting...

[Seagoon]

Originally posted by Replicant
What pubs are these?  I've never known a pub to use plastic glasses anywhere in the UK.  They're used at festivals etc., mainly because they're disposable.

The change is being made region by region via the local licensing laws. Here is the case that really got the ball rolling in 2000:

Calling Time on Pub Pint Glasses

If you would like I can give you a few articles on localities (particularly in Scotland) that already have licensing laws on the books mandating it. Several chains are already "voluntarily" switching over to the kiddie cups solution.

- SEAGOON

[Curval]

hehe..nice try Gto

All this talk about little old me.

Toad...you are really upset by all of this.  I responded to a thread regarding a gun massacre in the US.  I will simply try not to comment in the plethora of posts that are inevitable on the same subject in the future, that's all.  Thus I will bite my lip and try to keep my fingers off my keyboard when these events are posted.

Now...should someone post about the horrors of Japanese baseball bat killings or road traffic fatalities I may or may not respond.  That I will decide upon when, or if, such things are subjects of pots in the future.

The subject matters are completely unrelated...in my opinion of course.

You have turned what I said into an opinion that I don't care about anything but gun related deaths in the US.

As to Naswan's post..I felt that it spoke very clearly to your idea of banning inanimate objects.  As you can see the injuries and fatalities in the attacks he mentioned were relatively minor with the exception of his last example.

lazs' explanation for this is so stupid it deserves no comment at all.

[RTSigma]

I love how this has come down to gun control and how America is going crazy.

Anyone ever think about the kid himself? Maybe his grandparents abused him, or raised him in a way to snap.

Guns can't shoot themselves. It takes someone holding the handle, finger on the trigger, to aim and rationalize in their head that killing someone is the right thing to do in the situation in their head.

I blame bad influences from the grandparents and on the school for not noticing his behavior and keeping tabs on it.

I have anger issues too, but I'm not about to go mow down kids at school. My mind isn't SCREWED UP.

[Shuckins]

Curval, have you ever wondered why Palestinian terrorists almost never go into restaurants in Israel and start blasting away at the patrons?

They've tried it...and found that very soon they wind up very dead...because the owners and patrons are almost all armed.

They don't try it in the schools anymore either...because Israeli teachers ARE armed.  I've seen it.

The only safe method of striking at Israeli civilians is the suicide bomber.  A gunman might get one or two patrons in a restaurant before the patrons gunned him down like a dog...therefore, they've turned to explosives...which kill far more people.

Let's see you try to convince the Israelis to give up THEIR guns.  You would be laughed out of the country.

[thrila]

no plastic glasses in my city

[Vulcan]

Originally posted by lazs2
I believe that simply allowing those teachers who qualified and who wished to, to carry concealed you would eliminate all but a very few of these school shootings and those that did happen would end very quickly.  

If the kids knew that a smalkl percentage of the adults were armed the cowardly little pukes wouldn't even consider it.  Even if one of em dredged up the stones to try it he would be shot down before long.

You just don't get it lazs, these kids are suicidal. An armed teacher just makes it easier for them to go out in a blaze of glory.

Seagoon: I totally agree. However there are people (lazs is a good example) here that have a blinding belief that every person on this planet should be armed to the teeth like some sort of Mexican Bandito. They often cite and critize laws of countries like NZ, Australia and the UK as infringing on peoples freedoms - yet can't see the flipside of the law protecting peoples freedom (to live). So I take oppotunities like these to point out the different path we choose to take, its results, and its benefits - not to change their minds about gun laws in the US, but to educate them that the US is not the only "way".

[Vulcan]

Originally posted by beet1e
That's because your country's total use of automobiles greatly exceeds your country's total use of guns. About half of your (and our) population uses an automobile each day. But very few people (relatively speaking) use a gun.

cheese, I had to call tomato just now. Bah, never mind....

beet1e ever noticed how automobiles, which are required to be registered, warranted as fit for the road, and drivers of such vehicles who are required to be licensed and are the subject to very strict road laws are compared to firearms to which the pro-gun crowd want to be free for all - unlicensed, unregistered etc ironic isn't it.

[Toad]

Originally posted by Curval
Toad...you are really upset by all of this.

[/b]

Hardly. OTOH, I feel free to point out the tears over firearms deaths and the blythe "necessary to my lifestyle" discounting of deaths by other inanimate objects.

 

Originally posted by Curval
You have turned what I said into an opinion that I don't care about anything but gun related deaths in the US.

[/b]

I didn't write it, you did. It sure LOOKS like an opinion that you don't care. Now that you explained it, I can see what you may have meant to say. Next time perhaps you'll provide more depth and detail.

As you can see the injuries and fatalities in the attacks he mentioned were relatively minor with the exception of his last example.
 

Yes, they are. Of course, all firearms deaths are dwarfed by the magnitude of vehicular related deaths. Aren't they?

[thrila]

I've been looking for info on the plastic glasses, i can't find much other than proposals and plans to serve drinks from glass bottles in plastic glasses.  Not a thing about any laws or banning glasses.  I've never been to a pub and had a pint in a plastic glass.

A bit OT-  Toad you were in the southwest not long ago, what was your pub experience like? If you went to one that is

[Toad]

Originally posted by Vulcan
beet1e ever noticed how automobiles, which are required to be registered, warranted as fit for the road, and drivers of such vehicles who are required to be licensed and are the subject to very strict road laws are compared to firearms to which the pro-gun crowd want to be free for all - unlicensed, unregistered etc ironic isn't it.

Ever notice how despite the requirement to be registered, warranted as fit for the road, and drivers of such vehicles who are required to be licensed and are the subject to very strict road laws doesn't stop automobiles from being used to kill many, many, many MORE thousands of innocent people than firearms do?

[Toad]

Didn't see any trouble in the pubs I visited. No plastic glasses either, but that was 2003.

[bustr]

If you take Nashwans examples and say that Great Britan is equal in size and population to one state in the US. Then you have a rate about on par of ours for domestic violent incidents in schools and general violence in the population. If you read Seagoons article about glassing, it says there are around 5000 incidents in Great Britan a year.

Glassing - smashing a glass or bottel upside a persons head or into their face. Rather violent. Really messy. Ive seen it done with a beer pitcher. Guy lost all the skin on one side of his face. But the article points out the governments answer to human violence is banning inanimate objects. I suppose at some point you will be required to check your rings at the door because of the damage that can be done in a fist fight.

Now if you take just total numbers of violent crimes each year per National Sovergin entity, sure Breat Britain is a peace love and groovyness paradice. We should all imigrate to England and live in the south side of London. Or to the Bahamas. Being a smaller island I'm betting the government has tighter control of the population. I would bet the incident per year of violent crime in the Bahamas is on par with Vermont, maybe a bit more with the drug gangs on the Island. Though Vermont's gun carry law is very simple. There is none. Just put your peice in your pocket and go about your business. Vermont has a very low rate of crime compaired to the rest of the US.

Issues like this high school shooting tend to polarise people into their tolerance levels for personal risk. Long term state intervention tends to breed out the independance that is tollerant of risk. Those with less tolerance are more open to their lives being externaly regulated if the result is an illussion of comformity and safety. Populations locked into small geographic areas or ideologic affinities tend toward societies of this nature.

Here in the US we still have the geographic space and cultural foundation to breed large numbers in the risk accepting group. So from one side our answer is to shoot the littel monsters if they suddenly decide today i will kill my whole school. After all the littel monster decided to take the risk of living by the sword so to say. But then the risk averse portion of the population will say we have to understand the littel monster because, well he is a victem of the risk accepting portion of our society and didn't know what he was doing.

So folks, 1 dead littel monster vs 10 dead innocent citizens? All the understanding in the world didn't save the 10 innocents, did it?

[Seagoon]

Originally posted by thrila
I've been looking for info on the plastic glasses, i can't find much other than proposals and plans to serve drinks from glass bottles in plastic glasses.  Not a thing about any laws or banning glasses.  I've never been to a pub and had a pint in a plastic glass.

A bit OT-  Toad you were in the southwest not long ago, what was your pub experience like? If you went to one that is

Thrilla,

Here's just one brief article on it indicating the change in at least 45,000 pubs: Pint Glasses to Go Plastic

I'm glad that the majority of Englishmen here drank in nice quiet establishments, I myself worked as a student as a barman at the Ardgowan pub in St. Andrews which used Glass and had precious few violent incidents, so obviously this problem of glassing is not universal and the consumption of beer doesn't inevitably lead to bloodshed [the same coordinate principle applies to the vast majority of gun owners in the US]. But I'm sorry to say that as far back as the early 90s I also drank at places in Glasgow, Dundee, and even several student unions that served Pints in plastic due to glassing (during the push in 2001 they estimated 5000 glassing incidents a year).

But if I may comment -  to detail the number of pubs that have or haven't gone plastic is to miss the point entirely, the fact that we have proposals and a move to go to plastic glasses (i.e. to limit the access to potential weapons) indicates a mindset that says "the solution is to deal with the instrument rather than the actor.  Since we must not question the root of his actions, we can only remove the instruments" Simply put, we cannot, indeed must not deal with the causes of the upsurge in public violence  and antisocial behavior, instead we can only hope to make the violence less lethal. Hence my comment about defanging the rat.

- SEAGOON

[Samiam]

Originally posted by RedTop
Sometimes I think the world is getting crazier and crazier.

Originally posted by Toad
In my ancient times, the '60's, it was ROUTINE for many students to bring guns to school. We left them in the car though, because right after school let out we went hunting. Happened every Fall; no one thought a thing about it. No gun rampages in school.

Shortly after Columbine, John Stossel did a series of reports on school violence and he found that, like Toad said, in the 40's and 50's guns at school weren't uncommon and there were way more school shooting incidents resulting in more deaths on a per capita basis than we've seen in the last two decades. Media hype has skewed our perspective.

[Curval]

Originally posted by Shuckins
Curval, have you ever wondered why Palestinian terrorists almost never go into restaurants in Israel and start blasting away at the patrons?

They've tried it...and found that very soon they wind up very dead...because the owners and patrons are almost all armed.

They don't try it in the schools anymore either...because Israeli teachers ARE armed.  I've seen it.

The only safe method of striking at Israeli civilians is the suicide bomber.  A gunman might get one or two patrons in a restaurant before the patrons gunned him down like a dog...therefore, they've turned to explosives...which kill far more people.

Let's see you try to convince the Israelis to give up THEIR guns.  You would be laughed out of the country.

Funny how you cannot compare New Zealnd with the United States according to Seagoon " comparing NZ to the USA is beyond even Apples and Oranges" but it is perfectly acceptable for you to compare Israel to the US?

Israel is effectively at war 24/7 Shuckins.  Granted it may seem that way in the US, especially recently, but it is still apples and oranges.