And the “occassional freak” who does something like Dunblane is ACTUALLY LESS of a PROBLEM WITH A GUN than without one !
Without a gun, the Dunblane thing could have been done ‘better and more effectively’ with 2 cans of petrol – one poured round the outside of the building first, to prevent people leaving, then one inside to burn them out – it would kill everyone. (As Bomber Command how to kill thousands of people and the answer is fire, not shrapnel)
But we don’t ban petrol – we cart millions of gallons of the stuff through our city streets every day.
We SHOULD make guns a lot more accessible to the general public – as in Switzerland where EVERY adult male has an automatic assault rifle, no less.
john_u
December 12, 2010
WRONG – WE THE PEOPLE SHOULD BE ARMED !
[I find it encouraging this and a number of other pro-gun comments are showing up in a U.K media outlet. Gun rights is not completely dead over there.
I have sometimes considered analyzing crimes committed using firearms and showing there was a “better” way to have committed the crime without a firearm. The mass killings are the easiest to demonstrate this. And as john_u suggests fire is one of the better ways. Driving a vehicle through crowds of people and causing structures to fail are also “good” methods.
I have not done so for two reasons. 1) I’m hesitant to give people ideas on effective mass murder. And 2) There aren’t that many mass murders to analyze.—Joe]
I think you mean “Not that many mass murders, excepting those committed by governments.” The 20th century saw ~7 million mass murders under the Nazis, ~10 million under Communist Russia, ~ 20 million under communist China. I don’t remember the numbers for Communist Cambodia, Vietnam, North Korea, and I can only speculate about Africa’s mass murders.
I meant, “Not that many mass murders by individuals”. So, essentially, you are correct. Governments don’t need any advice from me on more efficient killing.
Yeah, and even then they all quickly found out that shooting the victims was expensive and slow. So they turned to more efficient methods.
I recall discussing terrorism with a retired DIA analyst, shortly after 9/11. He predicted the silly and incoherent security response, and asked me how I would kill as many people as possible in a high rise building. I’m a chemist. He’s a (long ago) microbiology major.
It wasn’t that hard to come up with multiple scenarios, none of which would be easy to stop with anything less than strip searches offsite from the target.
Terrorism, like crime, is committed by specific individuals and groups. Those are the proper targets of security forces, not some readily changed and specific methods.
After 9/11, the government reached out to Hollywood scriptwriters to get ideas of things that terrorists could do. I found that funny though I’m sure Hollywood had lots of ideas.