Yet Another Mass Shooting . . .
. . . but this one is a bit different.
Seems that in a city – I’ll name it in a bit – someone went into a restaurant and shot up the place. Several were wounded, and two have died so far.
Authorities believe the shooting to be gang-related. It’s thought that an automatic weapon was involved.
However, this isn’t a good news story. The perps got away; there was no one on the scene with a weapon to confront them. And no: that’s not because the restaurant had declared itself to be a “no gun zone”.
It’s because the shooting happened in Goteborg, the second largest city in Sweden – or, as someone we “know and love” might spell it, “Sweaden”. (smile) One of those calm, safe, “nanny-state” countries in Europe that US gun control advocates keep holding up as the “model we need to emulate”.
There was no one to oppose the shooter because Sweden’s firearms laws make it exceptionally difficult to obtain a permit for concealed carry. While firearms ownership is legal, virtually all firearms ownership requires a permit (a few exceptions – including weapons made before 1890 which do not use “gas-tight unit cartridges” and air rifles – require no permit). The number of firearms that may be owned is restricted unless one can demonstrate a “valid reason” for owning more.
Even carrying a weapon in public in Sweden is in general unlawful unless for a “specific, legal purpose” such as hunting or going to a gun range. Concealed carry permits are rarely issued to anyone except police and “specially-trained security officers” – and only then when one can demonstrate compelling need, such as a “proven and very real threat to one’s life”.
Yet the incident happened in Sweden anyway – in spite of Sweden’s rather severe restrictions on firearms. And the article goes on to state that violence involving firearms is “is not uncommon in Sweden’s major cities”, though incidents such as this one are said to be “rare”.
Sounds like criminals in Sweden pay about as much attention to gun laws as criminals here. So, pray tell: what makes our “liberal brethren” think new gun control laws here will work any better than they do today in Sweden in preventing gun crime?
Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists, Guns, Legal
Never let facts stand in the way of a great political meme, that’s the liberal motto.
Lars are you up yet! LARS WAKE UP! The world needs a hero.
“The world needs a zero.”
Fixed it.
As you well imply Hondo, a legally armed populace is a tremendous asset. Recently in France I believe they put uniformed members of the French Military on the street corners in Paris. In London I think they had the SAS on standby. In SWEADEN, they have the Home Guard if they need them I guess. Living in Texas, I don’t foresee the need for anything similar in regards to a military force necessary to shoot bad guys locally. We got this. Hold my beer.
Man I miss Texas……
Simple. They will pull the ol’ classic “it came from a place with looser gun control”.
I got an idea… ban gangs. Oh wait, they are? Shit.
Strict gun control laws only help criminals. They do nothing to protect the general populace.
Criminals don’t get their weapons from legal sources.
One day, someone will wake up to this.
So…
That’s 1 for Sweden and 600 for the US?
91A10,
1 what? 600 what?
And if you say what I think you’re going to say, back it up with reputable facts.
Care to explain where that “600” number came from (if it wasn’t rectus extractus, of course)? Even the HuffPost – hardly an objective source of data when it comes to gun issues – admits that there are less than 6 a year in the US. And they cite research done at Harvard as their source.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/15/mass-shootings-tripled_n_5992702.html
Yes … 600 is hyperbole but count the dots on the map.
http://library.stanford.edu/projects/mass-shootings-america/maps
I see your Harvard and raise you a Stanford.
Oh goody. Another Lars. Let me guess…we’re all racists too.
You are aware that that chart goes back nearly 50 years, right? Which means at, say, an average of even 2 incidents per year there would be around 100 total incidents?
Moreover, both the Harvard and Standford methodologies are flawed. Both use raw counts vice rate statistics – which neglects to account for the effect of an increasing population.
By doing that, they each hide (in my view, intentionally) the the fact that a substantial number of present-day incidents are attributable simply to the fact that the US population has increased nearly 62% since 1966, and by over 37% since 1982. Presuming the fraction of lunatics and/or criminals perpetrating such crimes remains the same, population increase alone would mean we should expect a 37% and 62% increase in the total number of expected incidents, depending on whether we’re comparing today with 1982 or 1966. That means if there were 3 such incidents in 1966, we should expect to see about 5 today; if there were 4 in 1982, we should expect to see 5 or 6 today.
Increased urbanization also has had an effect. Most violent crime is urban. Since 1966, the US has become decidedly more urbanized. So we’d expect proportionally more violent crime today due to that effect as well.
In any case: a rate of 1 incident per 64 days works out to roughly 5.7 incidents per year. Given a current US population of somewhere around 318,000,000, that’s 1 lunatic/criminal perp (and 1 incident) for roughly each 55.75+ million US residents.
Yes, zero such incidents annually would be better. But unless you want to live in a draconian police state without civil liberties, you’ll never see that – and probably not even then. In such states, mass killings generally still exist. It’s just the government perpetrating them vice lunatics or criminals. And it’s often done on a continuous, industrial scale vice once every 64 days.
Don’t believe me? Ask someone who emigrated from the former USSR, the PRC, or Cambodia after surviving the Khymer Rouge.
Also, this does not show much of a “decline”.
“Mass shootings becoming more frequent”
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/mass-shootings-becoming-more-frequent/
More people are killed each year drowning in swimming pools, killed with baseball bats and stabbed to death than killed with guns.
More people are beaten to death with fists and 2×4’s than killed with guns yet you liberal moron assholes just stay on your guns are bad meme…
What is it with you idiots?
The NRA is the most powerful lobby in DC and has done a great job telling you pukes to go pound sand.
More pro gun legislation has been passed under your liberal nanny crybaby golfer in chief than in the past three decades.
GFY…
Actually your statements aren’t quite accurate with respect to manner of death in a felony situation.
There were 12,253 murders in 2013 of this number 8,454 were firearms murders or 68% of all murders. The bulk of the balance was with knives.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law-enforcement/expanded-homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2009-2013.xls
Stairs(or slip and fall) kill almost 30,000 people a year…there are certainly far more effective means of dying in the US than murder. Cancer and heart disease are the big killers.
Oddly enough Bloomberg’s concept of limiting fatty foods if it could actually be effective in saving just 12 percent of heart disease deaths a year would save five times as many people as any concerns over reducing murder…
I don’t disagree with your views, I believe no amount of gun control reduces murder as effectively as better policing and monitoring geographic locations known for murders around drug trafficking.
I just wanted to make you aware of the statistical evidence.
Sorry if this was offensive that was not my intent.
I guess someone never heard of the fallacy called “drawing statistical conclusions based on a small sample size”.
Short version: sh!t tends to happen in clusters in the real world. You need more than 3 or 4 data points over time to show a meaningful trend, because a cluster of occurrences in the short term masks long-term trends quite well – particularly when someone, through intent or ignorance, looks at or emphasizes the cluster vice analyzing the long term trend.
That’s doubly true when the raw data isn’t normalized to account for population growth or other factors that can be reasonably expected to affect simple counting statistics. That’s the case in both of these studies – both use raw counting studies, which do not account for changes in the US population.
Harvard researchers tend not to be ignorant. Draw your own conclusion as to why they’re focusing on a small sample including a cluster vice the long-term trend, and why they’re using a statistic that masks the effect of population growth on the result.
Even the folks at Everytown for Gun Safety had to admit that mass killings represent 1% of murders…
https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.everytown.org/images/MassShooting_v7_CS6_WEB.pdf
Consequently something that kills 90 people a year isn’t much to fear. Dogs kill 45-50 people each year and I’m pretty sure nobody is too worried about that.
There is another interesting anomaly in the history of many of these mass shootings and that’s the presence of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs in the treatment phase of these individuals who have a history of mental health issues. Additionally those on monoamine oxidase inhibitors are prone to psychosis when abruptly stopping the drugs as is often the case with mental health patients who are notorious for stopping drugs as soon as they begin to feel better.
As with all things surrounding mental health there are difficulties due to patient privacy laws, but one could make a successful argument that those under SSRI or MAOI treatment should be reported to authorities and have any weapons in the home removed until such time as they are medically cleared. That at least is an action which restricts mental health patients from firearm possession and is a step towards recognizing statistical data with some relevance.
I doubt that legislation will be passed, but we all hear about how important it is to have better treatment options. Removing access to firearms takes a step towards reducing those 90 deaths while also addressing those who don’t take anyone’s life but their own which is another outcome of those drugs and their cessation.
I should have state 1% of firearms murders as opposed to all murders.
To attempt to use medical information to restrict gun possession is opening a can of worms, as we’ve discussed before. So, the cops find out you’re on psychiatric meds, and come and confiscate your guns? What if the patient is a veteran? Or a woman with a restraining order on her ex-husband? And the questions go on and on. Mental illness is an important factor of what is happening with these shootings, but to attempt to use medical information to exert control by law enforcement is going to come back and bite us on the ass, almost instantly.
Agreed. My position is that your basic Constitutional rights should remain intact until a judge has ruled you’re mentally incompetent as a matter of law. Far too many doctors already think they’re God. They’re not.
But that’s precisely what I believe the gun-control crowd will push for next – barring the right to possess a weapon based on “medical opinion”. And I also believe they’ll try and add PTSD to the list of “mental conditions” that bar weapons ownership.
We already use medical information to restrict driving, or to restrict flying this is another aspect of that.
You end up on psychotic drugs you probably shouldn’t be handling firearms because things are not right in your head. From a self safety standpoint and not a mass shooter standpoint a lot of depressed people find their way to a handgun and an early death. Additionally if those drugs keep you from holding a job you maybe ought not be holding a firearm.
I realize that in the absence of firearms people will still be quite successful in killing themselves, Japan is a classic example of this. But firearms are damn efficient at ending lives.
But if being on an SSRI or MAOI won’t disqualify you from owning a firearm then probably nothing will until you misuse the firearm.
A woman with a restraining order on her ex is an interesting situation that you bring up because when it comes to murder of women a little more than one out of three are killed by a husband or boyfriend and if you add in moms, daughters and sisters the number of women killed by the appropriate male relationship is almost half of all murders of women..that’s significant enough to be relevant in determining if a restraining order that removes weapons from the ex will have an impact.
Bad comparison, VOV.
Last time I checked, neither driving nor flying a plane was a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Those are authorities granted administratively by the state or Federal government pursuant to duly passed law.
In contrast, it’s now settled law that individual firearms ownership is a right guaranteed by the US Constitution. The 14th Amendment is rather specific on when a person’s Constitutional rights may be denied. That requires “due process of law”, not medical judgement.
Your argument is equivalent to saying we should allow restricting someone’s right to practice the religion of their choice because medical evidence indicates some of its tenets require actions that are medically risky – such as those of the Christian Scientist faith. The courts have held that adults have the right to do exactly that on Constitutional grounds. It takes a court order – or, in other words, due process of law – to restrict that right, not merely “medical evidence”. Such court orders are sometimes obtained, but a doctor alone cannot set aside their rights.
And that is precisely as it should be. It should indeed take due process of law to strip someone of a specified Constitutional right.
Both the AMA and the CDC are severely anti-gun. If you let that camel get his nose under this tent flap, you will lose your 2A rights before you can say “routine physical.”
Bingo.
The word ‘shootings’ is not the same as ‘killings’.
It is always a false assumption by those who want MORE gun control that a shooting results in a death.
This is completely not true, no matter how they want to twist statistics and data to suit their needs.
Just because someone takes potshots in yo’ hood, and one of the bullets flies through one of your windows, it does not mean anyone was actually on the receiving end of the bullet, or that it was, in fact, anything other than a stray bullet.
I love it when the media go into their usual hysterical approach to the mysterious land of weaponry and equate the two terms. They are not equal.
Are we going to count the turkey hunt this spring in the shooting statistics?
In both the Harvard and Stanford studies, it appears they actually do mean “mass shootings with multiple human victims”. It’s unclear whether they mean all victims died, or what threshold was used to define a “mass shooting”. Maybe it’s there, but it wasn’t particularly obvious when I looked and I didn’t have a lot of time to “dig deep” to find it.
Well, you can’t even count on the CDC to be accurate with something like this. They incorrectly included 18-19 year olds, who are legally adults, in the statistics they gave the Brady campaign, which drastically skewed the numbers. Once that group was removed from the statistics, the ‘children who die from gunshots’ was reduced by nearly half, which wilted the Brady campaign’s tear-jerker campaign.
I’m afraid I don’t see the point here. Whether you died or not from a gunshot wound, you’ve still been shot. I would think that would qualify you as a ‘victim.’
If you were directing that comment at me, PN, some rather dubious studies (e.g., the famous “Mother Jones” study) make such an arbitrary distinction. I believe the one from MJ only counts an incident where 4 or more are killed (and I could be wrong about that). My intent in my comment immediately above was to say that I wasn’t sure where the Harvard and Stanford studies drew their “cutoff line” for a “mass shooting”, or precisely how they defined it – but that each did seem to require multiple people getting shot.
FBI says four or more victims, so a triple homicide is not considered a mass incident but if the shooter shoots himself in addition, the incident makes the cut.
Correction, if the shooter shoots himself it is NOT a mass killing, if he is killed, say, by the police it is. Technicalities…
It was just a general comment, Hondo. I didn’t mean to sound like I was picking nits. I do appreciate your feedback, though.
Regarding the “Harvard Study”:
#1. Harvard School of Public Health.
#2. Data supplied by Mother Jones. Awesome dude.
#3. From the article: “[…] mass shootings—defined as public attacks in which the shooter and victims were generally unknown to each other and four or more people were killed[…]” This data includes the shooter, i.e. the criminal. Nice.
#4. From the article: “They write that the reason for the accelerating rate of mass shootings has not yet been identified[…]” I.e., Correlation not equal to causation, duh.
#5. The crime rate was in decline during the years Beavis and Butthead was on the air. I’ll see your Harvard and raise you a Mike Judge.
Beavis & Butthead as crimestoppers, huh?
Yes, I do recall that when the Beatles were on the Ed Sullivan show, not one crime was commited in New York City that entire hour.
The whole point of the post was that criminals, whether in Sweden or elsewhere, don’t give a shit about gun laws. The one common denominator whenever these shootings are thwarted is a good guy with a firearm. Why stop law abiding citizens from lawfully carrying a firearm.
If criminals gave a shit about ANY law, we’d call them citizens instead of criminals
So the M13 gang must be expanding cause of their love for Swedish cuisine. Air rifles eh. “You’ll shoot yer eye out!” So I’m surprised they are allowed. So an old Colt Preacemaker in .45 Colt is good to go. Okay, I’ll take that at least. No wait, it uses a gas tight cartridge.
Leaves the door wide open for percussion revolvers, though.
Yeah!! And if you’re close enough you can simultaneously set the criminal’s clothes on fire!
Perhaps Sweden needs to outlaw crime.
Sapper3307…Brilliant! I wonder if they’ve thought of that?
Forgot to add /sarc/. I was not offending you brother.
OK I wont rat you out for another ARCOM.
http://static.wixstatic.com/media/b0bc8d_2ea387e9ef09412fa78259ecb9c3f3e0.jpg?dn=Watcha_Talkin_Bout.jpg
Maybe I should let the folks in Greenland, Russia, Belarus, Estonia, Lithuania, and virtually all of Central/South America and the Caribbean know you think they’re not “civilized”. After all, according to Wikipedia they all have intentional homicide rates higher than the US.
Better yet, why don’t you go and tell them all yourself?
Just curious, do those stats include the “self murder” category?
Irrelevant. You brought up the subject of murder. Justifiable homicide is not murder.
Here. This will make you feel better.
“And the idea that the answer to gun violence is more guns is insane.” Yeah, I feel the same way about cars, hot dogs, and swimming pools. If only the heartless capitalist pigs would stop making making more of them, there would be fewer victims of car accidents, chokings, and drownings.
So, I name three things that cause many deaths and you single out one? Is that representative of the distorted thinking of all socialist Canucks or just you? You are too easy but, if you persist, I’ll crank it up, pucky.
He was staying on track. He mentioned things that kill more people annually than firearms.
Look, puck boy, you have already invoked a number of tricks in argumentation, so at ease with that strawman and red herring shit. The United States of America has a Constitution, one of whose amendments guarantees our (not yours, by the way, just us Americans) right to bear arms. That’s it. You think there are too many guns here? Stay the hell out of the US. I think that Canada pisses on free speech. So, I guess that makes us sort of even. The difference is that I don’t much give a shit what you Canucks do with free speech.
Well, you guys up in the Great White North are also the ones that didn’t think freedom was worth a fight back in the late 1700s. So I guess it’s unsurprising that you favor a little temporary security over freedom.
I guess we shouldn’t really expect you to “get it”. You’re apparently quite happy in your chains, since they weigh lightly upon you – today, anyway.
Not a comparison, ED. Merely an observation that you did not consider those nations “civilized”. Most people of average intellect or better would disagree.
Which means, of course, that you’ve proven your bias. You’re selectively defining “civilization” to suit your own argument.
We all know that’s BS. Did you really expect to get away with that?
“USA! USA! USA!” Yeah, that was the chant when the US hockey team beat the USSR in the 1980 Olympics, too. I finally found some value in your comments. So, thanks for that, Lars North.
Was it Sweden that had a Hells Angel member gun down their Prime Minister or President of the senate or some such a few years back? They have had biker gang warfare there for many years. It does not sound like the criminal element has a very hard time strapping up. Perhaps the swedes need to bring back hanging.
Jesus. You leftys always bring up “gun culture” as if it were an actually a thing. It’s utter nonsense and just another retarded made up lefty talking point. And stop with the “I own rifles and handguns” worthless platitudes. It’s not believable and is only said by people to make their argument seem sound.
It’s Lars, isn’t it? He changed his tag.
And now, when he realizes the argument isn’t working – the backpedal. The variant here: “Well, except for (place issue here), you’re OK.” Other versions: “That’s not what I meant at all”; “You misunderstood me”; and many others.
“Overall you Yanks are pretty awesome people.” Yes, we are. And, overall, you Canucks sucks, but some of your military is pretty awesome.
That’s it. No more oil or maple syrup for you.
Lars North persisted and a promise is a promise. I don’t want to leave his opening comment alone: “Maybe if you folks spent more resources on taking care of your citizens than wars based on lies, and making the rich richer, you won’t have as much crime.” Talk about being chocked full of crud. First, he uses the notorious “you folks” which is the friend of he who would separate and generalize. Second, he presumes to tell us (the United States?) how our taxpayer funds should be spent. Third, he takes us to task for spending taxpayer funds on wars based on lies. (Good thing Canada wasn’t involved in those wars, eh?) Last, he faults the rich for being rich, which is the most telling of his comments and one that earned him “The Internationale” clip–in Frog, no less. And his answer to crime? Spend more money on failed social programs, designed to increase dependency on government and make us slaves to its whims. Stay in Canada, puck boy, along with our deserters and draft dodgers.
Looks like “Ed”‘s comments have disappeared. I’m guessing he was confirmed as someone else? Maybe the moniker “Lars North” was on target?