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I saw this the other day.
Makes sense, even in NZ.
Had a couple of young kids (14 and 8) camping, they saw my rifle and were calling it a sniper rifle, they play games on their phone killing people, I think that is why any nutter with a chip on their shoulder thinks is o k to shoot people, the police need to licence people to play these computer games, stop the immature and mentally challenged, see what the general population thinks about that.
Ive played those games a little bit.Quote:
Originally Posted by witchcraft
Not much though...
And they do have age restrictions, but enforcing that is a joke.
I agree in part.
One issue that he didn't touch on, is that there is zero deterrent for people knowing that no one else is armed. They know that they can act with impunity without much chance of someone else reacting to their use of a firearm or other weapon type. It's a bit like the old style flock of sheep deal, the easiest way for the shepherd to keep wolves at bay was to domesticate them and train them to protect the sheep. The wolves soon worked out that the sheep weren't an easy quick snack...
Yeah nah. Mass shootings started way before computer games existed. There are lots of countries where shooting is not a common method of solving ones grievances, the shootings that occur in the USA are complex... but mostly boil down to social issues + poverty + lack of mental health care + easy availability of handguns. And it's worth noting in the USA you are TWO HUNDRED times as likely to be shot by a handgun than by a long rifle.Quote:
Originally Posted by witchcraft
I recently read an article about trends in firearm ownership and the author wrote that when he was younger the majority of people he knew owned lever action firearms and all his friends that bought firearms the first one they bought was a lever action. He put it down to the number of cowboy and western programs and movies that were common when he was growing up, making the lever action "normal"
He followed through to today and everyone wants a AR style firearm, after all that is the predominant firearm featured in films and programs that have been normal viewing since I was in my teens or maybe earlier.
When you look at society shooting people has been normal viewing fare for years, then you have computer games that allows people to act out what they view and it normalises shooting people even more.
Firearms have been around since they were invented, they haven't just become recent possessions, and the firearm, being an inanimate object, it isn't going to jump up and shoot people without the assistance of a human.
So the firearm isn't the cause, it is the change in society, but the firearm is easier to target than it is to try and remedy what has changed in society.
Remedying the societal change would affect the way everyone lives and impact a whole lot of people and industries in society..........this is not an easy fix, but to fix/remedy the problem you have to identify the cause and nobody wants to do that.
Agreed. Drink driving is a similar issue but 30 years further along ....In the 70s and 80s it was as illegal to drink and drive as it is now- but cosiety did not see it that way. The social concensus seemed to be you were unlcky if you got caught and that he police had it in for you if they did anything more than warn you- no harm no foul crime and the only person hurt was the drunk driver usually (supposedly) ina single vehicle 'accident'.....After much education, painful reminders and a shift in societites attitude towards booze, now it is very frowned upon by most parts of society and you are seen as an idiot if you choose to drive drunk... This did not come about because someone legistlated a ban of any sort- it came about as society figured out that booze is no nesacarily evil and driving is not either but combining the two is never a good idea. Guns themselves are not evil, mental illness is not evil, and idiocy is not evil, but combining two of the three can be very dangerous so as a society we have to figure out the best way to keep these things separate- you cannot ban idiocy, it just wont work that way, you cannot ban mental illness as it does not work that way either, and banning firearms sounds like a start but that wont work either.....only those who are willing to comply will obey the ban and if they ar ewilling to comply then they are NOT in the first two groups and they are not the problem so it will make no difference to anyone except impinge on their rights....Quote:
Originally Posted by 19Badger
Edit- 30 years ago shoudl be 50 as it seems the 70s and 80s are further back than I would like to admit....It certainly feels like it was the 80s just a couple decades ago.......:thumbsup:
Yet when you look at the shooting data, long guns (ARs and Lever Actions) have never figured to be less than 1% of weapons involved in shootings (the rest are all hand guns) in the USA.Quote:
Originally Posted by 19Badger
And when I was a kid - before computer games - there was probably far more violence on tv in the form of westerns. Not to mention various books and comics packed with violence and described in the most brutal ways, who remembers Commando comics? Christ the amount of xenophobia, stereotyping, and violence in those was mind blowing!
So violence has been in our media since the bible was written. And as far as computer games go, if you applied the 'normalises shooting people' logic then what about all the sword fighting games? There are probably more people playing those. There has never been any correlation found between fps (first person shooter) games and real life shootings.
I would say if most kids who engage in FPS games come out with a fear of guns more than anything.
That has a similarity to NZ, most accidental shooting fatalities in NZ seem to be with .22 rimfire or shotgun type firearms. Ignoring the obvious multiple casualty events where centerfire rifles were the main tool used - this would be somewhat similar to the US stats where the majority of fatalities are handgun related rather than rifle (the variation to NZ here being the fact that handguns are much more restricted than the US).
Going back to the long rifle focus - looking at the stats on number of shooting events, compared with number of casualties and then looking at the type of firearm used by the offender this is where the public focus and media attention comes from (good old movie/hollywood again) and also most likely where the control efforts are being directed towards.
The americans have a 'thing' with long rifles. I have mates in the states who have swathes of AK-47s and clones, all sorts of AR variants. It's not unusual for them to have a minimum of a dozen ARs and a bunch of hand guns. But when they see a photo of my bog standard NZ hunting rifle with suppressor, bipod and scope they have a meltdown and ask why I have a 'sniper rifle'. So basically AR with 30 round mag and red dot = OK, bolt action with suppressor and scope = evil intentions in their books.
If you look at the top school shooting in the USA - Virginia Tech - 33 were killed by a guy with 2 hand guns.
I think we find the prevalence of 22 or shotties in NZ crime due to them being cut down to fill the pistols requirement.