Virginia Tech School Shooting

[Gandelf]

Games exist in the rest of the world yet it's not anywhere near as much of a problem in the rest of the world.

Or is it just that some countries are in the news more than others? After all, the USA is probably the global centre for communication, so it's logical (to me anyway) that you'd hear more news about that country than other less prominent ones.

[<ankh>]

Or is it just that some countries are in the news more than others? After all, the USA is probably the global centre for communication, so it's logical (to me anyway) that you'd hear more news about that country than other less prominent ones.

I don't agree - maybe USA is a global center for communication, but I can assure you that if this had happened somewhere else we would still have heard about it. ANY case where games would be blamed - no matter what country - would be in the news.

/Ankh

[Satyn]

I don't agree - maybe USA is a global center for communication, but I can assure you that if this had happened somewhere else we would still have heard about it. ANY case where games would be blamed - no matter what country - would be in the news.

/Ankh

not just games that get blamed for it. Also parents splitting up, leaving kids frustrated etc etc

[Xest]

Or is it just that some countries are in the news more than others? After all, the USA is probably the global centre for communication, so it's logical (to me anyway) that you'd hear more news about that country than other less prominent ones.

No it happened once in Germany and we heard about it. You only have to look at the gun death statistics to see the problem, deaths to guns per year is something like:

England - 70
Canada - 150
US - 53,000

[Lieva]

Hmm strikes me as odd that they said his writings displayed signs of violence and death so they 'flagged' him as disterbed.

Most teenage boys are interested in that sort of thing.
Heck there is a whole culture surrounding it.

They were right about him but I wonder how many other students have been 'flagged' as horrible people when theyre just normal?
True, there were other incidents but one teacher said his writings made her nervous specifically.

[Heta]

No it happened once in Germany and we heard about it. You only have to look at the gun death statistics to see the problem, deaths to guns per year is something like:

England - 70
Canada - 150
US - 53,000

this is why they need more guns in US so they are able to defend themself, I mean, if its that much gun related deaths each year its quite a large chance you might get into a scenario when you are forced to defened yourself... right?

[OohhoO]

Aye they should make it obligatory to carry a gun in USA
At least that would do a tiny little something about over-population
& think of the increased profit amongst gun-sellers, gravediggers, headstone makers & florists!
kinda no-lose situation!

[Xest]

One of the main problems with the "if we had more guns we could defend ourselves" attitude is that it's completely ignorant to how humans react in such a situation. If someone comes into a room and starts firing you don't just stand up like Neo in the Matrix and avoid all the bullets, more realistically the majority of people will likely freeze and probably wet themselves.

The other possibility is that adrenaline will make people lose it and fire like crazy, likely causing more harm than good in hitting innocents and not the target.

There aren't many people in this world who can stay cool in a fire fight and react calmly, ready their weapon and shoot cleanly at the target with a level head when something like this happens and those that can are often trained for years to do so. Even then sometimes soldiers with years and years of training can fall apart when a fire fight comes to. Whilst your average Joe student might like to think they could turn into Robocop or whatever and shoot the target cleanly and swiftly in a John Wayne style shootout, they just aren't. This is the problem with Americans, they're too caught up in Hollywood and everyone thinks they're a hero.

[Lairiodd]

No it happened once in Germany and we heard about it. You only have to look at the gun death statistics to see the problem, deaths to guns per year is something like:

England - 70
Canada - 150
US - 53,000

That isn't very fair. You need to look at the actual murder rates, who cares if you are murdered by a gun or some other means.

Just from a quick Google (no idea how accurate the site is but)

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_m ... per-capita

The murder rate per 1000.

#24 United States: 0.043
#44 Canada: 0.015
#46 United Kingdom: 0.014

The US is still around 3 times higher, but not the 300-1 ratio that you state. It is also around half the world average of 0.1.

What would be interesting would be a State by State listing. I could imagine a great variation between the States, with level of gun control.

[Xest]

That isn't very fair. You need to look at the actual murder rates, who cares if you are murdered by a gun or some other means.

The issue isn't overall murder rates though, it's about gun crime because gun crime is one of the few methods of murder that can lead to massacres like this one. There may well be a lot of knife murders in the UK, or strangling murders for example but neither of these types of murder are going to be relevant to a massacre, because, well you just aren't going to kill everyone in a class room by trying to strangle them.

Perhaps a decent sword, or bombs could be taken into account but even then it's really not terribly easy to create a decent bomb unless you're part of a politically motivated terrorist group or some such. There are far more failed attempts at bombs than there are successful attempts in the Western world, it's much harder than people think to carry out a successful bomb attack - the only reason it was so easy for the IRA was because they had the links to get military grade explosives, something your average wacko is likely to struggle to get hold of, deploy and detonate without getting caught. Even the tube bombings here in the UK weren't that catastrophic, it took 4 people 4 bombs and months and months of planning to kill 52 people, yet 1 person in a messed up state of mind killed 32 by himself with minimal planning.

Decreasing overall murder rates is a completely different animal that's for sure, but reducing these kind of massacres is something that could be targetted by gun control. When this guy bought the gun all he had to do was tick "No" to the question about whether he had a history of mental problems or not to walk out with the gun no questions asked, even though he did actually have a history of mental problems.