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| Demen Tolden |
 Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:31 pm Post subject: US gets its fourth school shooting in the last week |
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Forum Senior
Joined: 19 Sep 2007
Posts: 387
Location: St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
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I read in the paper before I left work tonight of a school shooting at Dekalb, Illinois, the fourth in a week. This makes me sad and angry. Why do these things happen at schools? Do other countries have similar problems? What aspects of a culture bring this about? Is there some kind of problem with our culture that we can fix to prevent this? Are school shootings something that, historically, never really happened before? Why do they happen at all?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-14-shooting_N.htm?csp=34&src=campaign=reprise_bnfeed_msn_illinois
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| GrowlingDog |
| Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:47 pm Post subject: Re: US gets its fourth school shooting in the last week |
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Forum Sophomore
Joined: 09 Feb 2008
Posts: 120
Location: At the gates of Sto-vo-kor
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| Demen Tolden wrote: |
I read in the paper before I left work tonight of a school shooting at Dekalb, Illinois, the fourth in a week. This makes me sad and angry. Why do these things happen at schools? Do other countries have similar problems? What aspects of a culture bring this about? Is there some kind of problem with our culture that we can fix to prevent this? Are school shootings something that, historically, never really happened before? Why do they happen at all?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-14-shooting_N.htm?csp=34&src=campaign=reprise_bnfeed_msn_illinois |
I think kids get angry and frustrated here (Australia) just as much as they do in the US but they cant get access to guns. You want to stop people getting shot, get rid of the guns. If you dont get rid of the guns, any measures you take will be like wiping the bloody nose of someone but doing nothing about the person that keeps hitting them in the nose. Not unlike a lot of policies. IMO
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| marnixR |
| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 12:56 am Post subject: |
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Forum Cosmic Wizard
Joined: 10 Apr 2007
Posts: 2163
Location: Cardiff, Wales
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in some schools in the UK you get people stabbed with knives, but at least because it's not guns the number of people killed is usually far lower
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| KALSTER |
| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:47 am Post subject: |
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Forum Professor
Joined: 08 Sep 2007
Posts: 1521
Location: South Africa
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Guns don't kill people, the bullets do.  Make bullets very expensive and fewer shootings should happen around the US and elsewhere. (Got this from Eddy Murphy. He used to be a funny guy!)
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| GrowlingDog |
| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 2:58 am Post subject: |
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Forum Sophomore
Joined: 09 Feb 2008
Posts: 120
Location: At the gates of Sto-vo-kor
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Australia had one mass shooting in Tasmania years ago and changed all the gun laws in the country. Best move they could have made. How many will shootings will it take in the US before they change their ways? Unfortunately, i doubt they ever will as the gun lobby is a very powerful force in the US politically. Maybe if a few politicians children got shot dead at school something might be done, but i doubt it.
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| william |
| Posted: Tue Feb 19, 2008 10:04 am Post subject: |
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Forum Ph.D.
Joined: 23 Jun 2006
Posts: 905
Location: USA
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If I had been there...
and if I had had a gun...
I would have done my best to stop the perpetrator.
If everyone else involved had had a gun, the guy would have been stopped quite promptly in my opinion.
If this doesn't seem to make sense, imagine the perpetrator going into a police station and attempting a mass shooting.
Cheers,
william
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| +SCIENCEgirl+ |
| Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 2:56 am Post subject: |
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Forum Freshman
Joined: 03 Feb 2007
Posts: 21
Location: Netherlands
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Here in the Netherlands it is really hard to get a gun. I heard you can buy them in the supermarket in the US  ? I really don't get that, that scares me, it is terrible.
there've been some incidents at schools here too. not so much, but these things did happen. the difference is that someone stabbed another kid with a knife (a kitchen knife or something) , and it was meant only for that kid. the reasons why they did was most of the time about bullying, and a few months ago it was about a stolen pen  .
but so much massive attacks like in the US, no they don't happen here. I think one of the main reasons is the weapons. In the US it's not weird to have a gun at home. here? I would look a lot different to my neighbours if I know they have a gun in their house.
So I agree with GrowlingDog, get rid of the guns.
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| Scifor Refugee |
| Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2008 1:39 pm Post subject: |
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Forum Ph.D.
Joined: 02 May 2005
Posts: 953
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It's not really as big of a big problem in the U.S. as many foreigners seem to believe. On average there are something like 25 kids killed at school/year in the U.S., out of 70 million kids in school. This means an average student's odds of being shot are something like 1 in 2.8 million - definitely not something you should worry about. You are vastly more likely to die in a car accident on the way to school that to be murdered at school in the U.S.
| +SCIENCEgirl+ wrote: |
| Here in the Netherlands it is really hard to get a gun. I heard you can buy them in the supermarket in the US ? I really don't get that, that scares me, it is terrible. |
I have lived in the U.S. for many years, and I have never seen a gun for sale at a supermarket. As for it being scary, as I said before your odds of dying from a gun in the U.S. are much lower than your odds of dying in a car crash. And since most of the murder victims in the U.S. are criminals who are killed by other criminals, your odds of being shot drop to practically zero if you take the simple step of not being a drug dealer. So no, I don’t think it’s something that’s scary or something that any reasonable person should worry about. If you want to worry about something, worry about cancer – that kills orders of magnitude more people in the U.S. than guns. |
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| +SCIENCEgirl+ |
| Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 1:39 am Post subject: |
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Forum Freshman
Joined: 03 Feb 2007
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| Scifor Refugee |
| Posted: Mon Mar 03, 2008 7:41 am Post subject: |
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Forum Ph.D.
Joined: 02 May 2005
Posts: 953
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Kmart is not a supermarket. |
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