The Gun Debate

[jmkiser 0]

I understand your arguement, and you bring up a good philosophical point. The fact of the matter is, though, that I simply don't believe you. Imagine this scenario: Someone took you back in time a week or so and put a big red button in front of you and say that they implanted a small bomb in Cho's head and it would go off if you pressed the button and if you failed to do so, he would kill 30 or so people. I don't believe you when you say that you would just sit there, let him kill the people, and then read about it in the news later. I'm not saying that you're lying, I'm just saying that when actually confronted with the situation, you would press the button.

well, if it was THAT simple, then sure why not? To be brutally honest, though, if the news read Cho died before killing a bunch of people OR a bunch of people got killed and the Cho died... we would all move on and live our lives the same.Not trying to be a prick, but I think you understand me the same.Hell, if I could only change the world with a shiny red button....

[strategy 4]

well, if it was THAT simple, then sure why not? To be brutally honest, though, if the news read Cho died before killing a bunch of people OR a bunch of people got killed and the Cho died... we would all move on and live our lives the same.

It's late and I might be reading this wrong, but I think you're saying that the world would be the same whether or not Cho had killed the 30 people. I think we'd be extremely lucky if that were the case. People aren't willing to accept that this type of thing is going to happen occasionally no matter what (see: the argument in the vtec thread about whether the school did all they could) and events like this make it far more likely that we'll see emotionally-driven legislation being passed.For the record, I am all for fixing loopholes like the one that allowed this guy to get a gun and I'm glad that at least one positive came from this. That said, they probably could have caught it before the 30 people were killed, and I don't think it would have saved any of them if it had been fixed before he bought his guns.

[jmkiser 0]

Meh, what if here... what if there... life's full of them. Imagine if some guy in his car was reaching for his car ciggarette lighter, wasn't paying attention, and slams into the back of a car. It kills tons of people in a chain reaction and creates tons of property damage. If the government had only banned those cigarette lighters built in cars because it distracts people from the road.....You get my point.Extraneous government laws might save a few people, but so what? Not only might they die, anyway, but something else could happen because VTech didn't happen (think Butterfly Effect kind of). They're dead, it's over, and the worst thing that we continue to do is play the what if game. If anything, I'm glad the incident got people into talking about the problems of this country (not that it was worth all of those lives to get people talking), but no one's talking about anything important. Think about it! Vtech started our discussion on gun control! Whether you're for it or not, so what?! "Well, we could have stopped Cho if we had guns" "Well, Cho would have never been able to get a gun", etc, etc. These aren't societal solutions, we just need to address the bigger picture. Which we're assuming would be guns. Want to slow down the ease of gun trade on the black market? Kick the black market in the balls and legalize/regulate the few drugs that are illegal in this country. Kill the drug war and give a striking blow to the underground market. You'll see that crimes (overall) are going to lessen as they have in (Switzerland or Sweden... I forget the stat from the LEAP website) when legalizing portions of drugs in their country. It's blatant, unreasonable, and unnecessary prohibition creates most of the crime (and attraction to crime) in this country. Seeing a rapist do what he does, does not attract other people into becoming rapists. Seeing your fellow man make 10 times what you make at work selling a few bags of marijuana creates criminal interest.But why talk about Cho? An isolated incident by one man who took his own life? This is only a big deal because we are making it a big deal. Someone might say that someone else will want to become "an hero" after seeing what Cho did. Imagine if this wasn't blown up into epic proportions. Well, I guess Cho did reach the new national record on a school shooting. So it was worth some kind of a mention. But,sadly, the only effect that I see coming out of this is exactly what Strategy brought up. Emotionally driven legislation = all the Cho incident is worth in the next 10 years