Wikipedia gives me the Kongsberg Attack, which was only 5 people killed + 3 injured. This is much much smaller than the 18 people killed in this elementary school, + the grandmother of the suspect (who was probably shot before the whole event started).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Las_Vegas_shooting
Las Vegas shooting was 50+ people killed.
Orlando Nightclub: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_nightclub_shooting
49 people killed.
It seems like dropping down to knife/sword fights would cut deaths significantly, unless you can show me some mass-stabbing numbers close to these 50-ish sized crowds.
Then there are mass murders using vehicles, like it happened in Europe several times in the past 15 years, or mass destruction with vehicle, like the "Killdozer" in USA itself.
I'm arguing that in the USA, mass-murder events have 15 to 50 deaths involved. In other countries, the number is just 5 to 20.
Weapons of choice matter. Guns kill more people more reliably than a knife, or even a car.
If we're playing argument by anecdote though, the perpetrator of the Nice attack killed 86 people and wounded 458 with a truck: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Nice_truck_attack
Violent dangerous people find a way.
The scale is irrelevant to the actual problem.
I agree. Mass killers will find a way. But if the way they find is a gun, we are looking at 20 to 50 deaths.
If they find a knife or sword instead, it will probably be less than 10 deaths.
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Now we have video camera showing that the guy shot the police officer at the school before going on a rampage. Do you think the guy would have been able to attack the police officer (who almost certainly had a handgun) with just a knife?
The real question is that of motive - why innocent children in the first place? USA has more than an epidemic of mass shootings, it has an epidemic of school shootings. Where does the urge to do such an evil thing come from?
The literal argument, from 3 posts ago, was that they'd find a knife.
Now that I've destroyed the "knife" argument, people are making newer arguments... unironically moving goalposts back. In any case, cars and truck attacks can't kill people inside of elementary schools. The school would block the bulk of the damage. Or you put concrete barriers to protect the school from the road (which is needed for accidents / vehicles that lost control anyway)
> Were does the urge to do such an evil thing come from?
Why are you changing the argument? The evil is innate to us and worldwide.
Why should that evil be equipped with a gun in this country? Other countries, they're forced to make due with weaker weapons, such as cars, trucks, or knives.
If we cannot stop the evil, then we mitigate it.
My overall point: "They'll find a knife" is a bad counterargument. "They'll find a knife" is the very point of gun-restrictions, we cut back upon the worst damage they these mass killers can do.
> The evil is innate to us and worldwide.
Prevailance of school shootings in US show that this kind of evil is indeed not innate worldwide. It is strongly rooted in United States. Nowehere else in the world people with access to firearams choose to end innocent children's lives at such scale. This is what troubles me.
Availability of guns is not unique to USA but using those guns to kill innocent children at super-unproportional scale is. Why?
If you don't have the answer to that question, the obvious solution is to remove the gun from the equation until you can answer the question.
Motive is an interesting question, but I think it's worthwhile to consider means as well.
If that’s true it would still be a big win.
There are also a lot of people who believe people have the right to end their own lives.
Cutting yourself with a knife results in your pain overriding your own brain. The innate will to live in our bodies causes us to back off of that kind of pain.
Pills / Poison take a significant amount of time, time that someone can find you and rush you to the hospital and save you.
Guns are often the most reliable suicide. Either shooting yourself, or death-by-cop (attacking a cop, and having them shoot you).
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Yes, suicidal people will find other ways. But we should cut and minimize the "reliable" suicide methodologies. Suicide-by-cop is more successful if you have a gun( without a gun, the cops are more likely to use non-lethal force and bring you in. With a gun, you're absolutely going to die on the street as they light you up).
Waiting periods are never effective for anything aside from suicide, and they may technically be unconstitutional, that is being fought in the courts right now.
NICS checks are really only effective in dealing with criminal behavior. In this case we're talking about a psychopath who had been manifesting outwardly for a while. For the most part you can't legally background check someone's mental health. What would've worked in this case is "social surveillance" and having the people he interacted with every day report him.