Mark _australia said...
Fk it, I'll wade in.
The mass shooting phenomenon can be laid squarely at the feet of the social engineers of the last 50 years and society's permissive attitudes to almost everything.
Why has Switzerland got a gun in virtually every home and young adult males who perform National Service take rifles home - yet it has virtually non-existant gun crime?
Why did well over half of boys in Australia shoot, do army cadets and take single shot rifles home with them up until the 1960's and we never had a shooting?
Well....
Now we (and the USA) have a society where kids learn nothing has a penalty when they are young (getting apprehended countless times for offences then finally fronting court and being a "first time offender" which pretty much requires the court to set them free - check the legislation).
Mental health care is stretched to the limit
Broken families - the vast majority of young male offenders come from a single mum household. Bugger all male teachers and scouts etc hardly happens anymore so a whole generation (or more) has very little or no appropriate male role models
Violent computer games and movies
Drug induced psychosis and particularly amphet
Gang members found with guns - typical fine is a few hundred dollars. Hang on, we will spend half a billion on a buyback from law abiding people, but don't have the guts to lock up those with illegal firearms?? WTF?
Strewth the list goes on..... but we had none of those things 50years ago so the cause is not hard to see.
Guns have not changed, but blokes and society have.
Disenfranchised youth who reckon they have nothing to live for, told at school the world is fkd with global warming and so on, using drugs, never had a male role model, never had a penalty for their actions, stuff all mental health care, playing violent video games and aren't quite right in the head. Yeah, blame the gun.
Do we ban guns? Yeah, OK then, let's say yes. Then in another few years we ban knives due to the knife problem. Then hammers, when crooks turn to hammers.... etc.
The psychotic people, or the plain bad people, will continue their behaviour with whatever tool they can get.
Fix society, not ban a tool.
For the record, I think the US should move to a licensing system. But I also think we should un-ban semiauto centrefires and some other things. Customs knock back imports of firearms that are LEGAL and can be licenced here, based on the fact they "look" kinda military - and that is plain dumb.
Agree with some elements
Both sides of government and their agendas have led to the decline in respect, morals and consequences by
some, but not all, in our community - times, they are a changin' - remember when Graham Kennedy got pulled from TV for making crow sounds that sounded like the F word, now look at the language we get everyday.
Guns
have changed over the last fifty years and that is what the gun control debate in Australia has focussed on.
Public policy development will at some point refer to risk - that being a combination of probability and consequence.
The probability of some unstable, seemingly normal individual going off with high powered automatic weapons is low, but the consequence may be very high, and after Port Arthur, deemed unacceptable - hence the gun control debate (accept that there may have been other agendas at play).
So I support the right of sports shooters to have the toys of their trade within reason.
Support the vermin control shooters to have appropriate tools for a clean, humane shot, and think the bounty on feral cats, foxes and pigs should be there to encourage this.
Do not support the availability of high calibre, high powered automatic and semi automatic weapons. I am sure there is some debate over what makes up the latter and am not qualified to comment, this seems to be where a lot of issues arise in Aus.
Every single military plan in history has taken into account the ability of the military, and then the populous. Hitler disarmed the civilian population as fast as he could - I wonder why?
