All I'm seeing around the interwebs atm is the same old tired gun control debates. Aspies are safe for now.
Meanwhile in China... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-20723910
I think that alone will shut up the pro gun control people pretty quickly. When there's a will, there's a way for these kind of people. You can't stop someone really determined to fuck shit up by pre-emptive bans on weapons. Because if not guns, knives, if not knives, crossbows, if not crossbows, explosives, if not explosives, kitchen utensils and so on.
Except none of the Chinese kids died. Knives, crossbows, explosives, kitchen utensils, socks with bricks in them and pointy sticks are all less effective at killing and/or more difficult to obtain and/or use effectively than semi-automatic firearms in the US. It's one thing if you're Anders Breivik and you have the intelligence, resourcefulness and determination to set up an agricultural company to obtain fertiliser for explosives, build a bomb from it and jump through some legal hoops to get guns, but if you're just the average maniac, it's going to make a difference to the final body count if you can't easily lay your hands on a gun when the homicidal urges strike.
explosives less effective at killing than guns? tell me you dont truly believe that. let me give you a brief history of explosives.
fireworks
shrapnel
projectile weapons
high explosive [lethal shockwaves]
explosives are more lethal than guns simply because the bullets coming from those guns are propelled by explosives
not to mention when all you have to do is leave a back pack on a timer in a classroom with some home made nitro glyceren [its not hard to make. you can get the recipie and instructions from google]
provided you do not blow yourself up making the stuff, be it nitro, anfo, semtex, your more likely to kill a greater ammount of people.
seriously. drop a bag with one of those in any classroom. timed to go off at last class. go about your day normally. dropping them off. whole school. gone. instantly.
Knives, crossbows, explosives, kitchen utensils, socks with bricks in them and pointy sticks are all less effective at killing and/or more difficult to obtain and/or use effectively than semi-automatic firearms in the US.
Explosives are more difficult to obtain and more difficult to use effectively than semi-automatic firearms in the US. Pointy sticks are less effective at killing than semi-automatic firearms. I didn't say that explosives are less effective at killing than semi-automatic firearms.
My point was that there are reasons why knives, crossbows, explosives, kitchen utensils, socks with bricks in them and pointy sticks aren't perfect replacements for guns; they all have at least one of the three deficiencies I laid out above, and if people have to resort to those things because guns are difficult to acquire, the body count will generally be lower, if there's a body count at all. When people have to start making their own nitroglycerin, it's at least going to weed out those killers on the lower end of the intelligence scale. Like I said, if you're Breivik, not a lot is going to stop you, but if you're Dumb McArse, making things difficult for you is probably going to limit the damage to some degree, and might avert a situation completely.