Quote:
Originally Posted by taosaur
I don't know how much more explicitly I could have said it: I'm not saying crime victims are in any way responsible for being attacked--the aggressor and only the aggressor bears responsibility. I was responding to desertgrandma's suggestion of paranoia as a strategy for urban survival, and you seem to agree with me that it's not the way to go.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand you prove my point. You see HarryT say that this and other violent crimes might be "related" to lax gun laws, and the OP asking if the economy is a factor, and they become a whole raft of "people who like to argue about social vs. individual responsibility." Even the person making the strongest (and least informed) claim about the influence of gun laws,
was not absolving the perpetrator of one iota of guilt.
I agree with you that it's ridiculous to seek a legislative solution to the actions of a madman, but it's also clearly the case that ready access to an arsenal contributed to the body count and the economy was a stressor on the perpetrator.
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Aaaaaaaaaaaaand, rereading your post, I would have to agree with much of what you said.
And, yes, access to weapons is pretty much always going to increase the body count. That's been true since the first knuckle-dragger picked up a rock and bashed some other k-d over the head with it. However, in this particular case "ready access" was simply a fact, not the fault of society or the government. I've got ready access to any number of potential weapons, knives, poisons, guns .... all of them quite legal everywhere (unless the UK and other nations have outlawed possession of steak and butcher knives and insecticides). It's not the access that prevents me from creating a body count. It's the fact that, no matter how much someone may piss me off, I do not believe that an injury done to me is worth killing over.
If you want to talk about ready access creating a body count, then forget guns ... let's talk chemicals that you can purchase at any store. Nails and pipes and a little reading on the internet .... a little bit of effort and you've got yourself a handy dandy pipe bomb. Favorite pastime of people like Eric Rudolf and Ted Kaczynski. As I recall even those dickless wonders at Columbine made bombs.
Or, let's talk poisons. Lots of them quite legal, and not all that difficult to use. Plus, if you don't give a rat's ass about being caught, then you don't even have to worry about whether they can be detected. After all, we are just talking about upping the death toll. What was Jonestown if not for a mass murder??
Ready access to alcohol and automobiles probably kills more people every year in the US than are killed by guns. Several people have purposefully run into crowds with their cars in an attempt to kill people.
Some people with ready access to fuel and matches have killed numbers of people in arson attacks. So .... should we consider a waiting period for the purchase of those items?
Mind you .... I am not arguing with you on these points. I am simply expressing the ideas as an extension of what we have already discussed. It's just that there has always been and always will be "ready access" to things that one or more human beings can use to kill lots of other human beings. Just like there have always been and will always be stressers that trigger certain people to do certain nasty things. If it's not the economy, then, trust me, the people who are prone to blame their troubles on something outside of themselves, will find something else to blame them on.
It's the economy!!
No, it's the (insert your least favorite ethnic group here)!!
No, you're both wrong!! It's the (insert your least favorite country here)!! In other words, blame Canada!!
Essentially, most people don't want to be held responsible for their own actions, they want to be free to do what they want to do, and they expect the government (or "society" or "religion") to keep a tight rein on everybody else. There is a disconnect there. A big one.
Going back to the man in New York .... if you read the article, carefully, you would see that he was losing his grip over a long period of time. And, it wasn't the "economy" that caused him to lose his job. He just stopped showing up at work one day. Gee .... guess what .... you don't go to work, you are going to get your ass fired. That has nothing to do with the economy.
That's what gives me the chuckles about various people using this man as an example of things that loom large in their mind, but have absolutely zip to do with what actually happened .... in ..... this ..... particular .... case.
It wasn't the economy. It wasn't the guns. It was that he lost his freaking mind. If he hadn't gone nuts, he'd still be employed. Once he'd gone down that bumpy road, if he hadn't had the guns, he would have found another weapon, and he still would have killed a lot of people. Anyone here ever hear of a certain Ted Bundy?? That man did a lot of damage in the Chi Omega house in Tallahassee and he didn't use a gun. Rough estimates are that he killed at least thirty-five people during his lifetime, and I'm pretty sure he didn't shoot them.