These NRA guys are Fascists at their worse – if a Congressman or Senators takes on their philosophy of hatred they are weeded out so fast & ruined by their Lobbyists .
Dr. Goebbels & his Cronies in the Nazi Party would be a fair comparison .

You’ve got armed police in every bank, every mall – pretty much anywhere you have security guards. Hell, we have armed security in airports throughout Europe. In terms of batpoop-insane ideas, it’s not really up there.

Me, if I was living there, and my kid was going to those schools, I wouldn’t want armed guards.
I’d want three army units and a fecking tank.
But I think my kid’s more valuable than the contents of the average American shopping mall. Your opinion my vary…

If you want to see what that would look like take a look a Israel, they are literally everywhere.

There were two armed guards at Columbine High School the day 15 people whe’re killed. It won’t solve the problem.

The Americans have lost their ways – and they don’t really know it :(

@JayTee – actually, there were two armed police who arrived after the shooting started.
Columbine didn’t have armed security guards the way that the NRA just suggested.

Think about it for a moment – they’ve already had three spree shootings *since Sandy Hook*. It’s going to take time to make any changes to legislation there no matter how many people get behind it, that’s just the reality of their legal system. So why not put in security guards now, even if only as a stopgap measure?

Mark, quote from Michael Moore, ‘Armed guards in schools? Hmmmm… Oh! That’s why the 2 armed guards that were at Columbine HS that day were able to prevent the 15 deaths?’

And of course Michael Moore isn’t known for sensationalising or just out right making sh*t up.

You happier with NY Times as a more accurate source? ‘a sheriff’s deputy was at Columbine High School in 1999 and fired at one of the two killers while 11 of their 13 victims were still alive. He missed four times’

but the bad guys will get guns whether they are legal or not so how do you prevent that? how many bad guys in this country have access to automatic weapons while the general populace are at their mercy?

One good way to ensure every bad guy gets a gun is to have lots of guns that can easily get into their hands. In Ireland lots of bad guys do have guns, but most don’t.

i was watching crimeline the other night & a mans home was broken into & robbed.they tied his wife up & shot him dead.another case of an OAP tied up & robbed in his home by masked intruders.he was terrified & took him hours crawling to get to his front door.these guys have all the guns they want but if they were attempting to rob an OAP who was tooled up for the job theb they would think twice about it.

How many times do you hear of 26 people getting shot to death in an Irish school?

Graham here’s the thing, bad guys involved in organized crime will still get guns but it appears that all these school shootings/public shootings involve individuals that are not involved in organized crime! If you take the gun out of the home then these people won’t have easy access to a gun, if and when that flip switches in their head.

none so far.how many people do you hear about being shot in swiss schools even though the entire population is armed?

@peter lawless i agree with you peter.look i dont like guns as much as the next person.i would love to see a world without guns & wars.but im also a realist & know that they are out there & fall into the wrong hands.i feel that because of this people have the right to defend themselves against it.the US government encourages people to sign up to the military & fight in immoral wars.this desensitises their culture & i believe this adds to the problem.

But the difference is the weapons are in the possession of currently serving soldiers. Ammunition is no longer kept at home and when it was, it was stored in tamper-proof, sealed containers. Soldiers must be screened physically and mentally before being equipped in the first place so most of the nutters aren’t armed. Also, the entire Swiss population is not armed, it is still high at about 25% consisting of people between the ages of 19 and 34.

But bad guys in our country shoot other bad guys in this country. Not shooting up schools for gods sake.

Why so many dislikes?
this the truth,
This is same fickle crowd they when a member of the Gardai gets shot at calls for them all to be armed

Joe, glad to see you can speak for everyone! And we all know what the bloody NRA mean with their statement, they want everyone armed not just police officers.

You are very right and it is MUCH easier to get your hands on a gun that is not legal the guns that are legal are big and comber some closing the door on public people having guns will NOT stop any of these thugs from having guns

True but 4million get screwed every day!

Compare gun related crime & murder within Ireland as a percentage of all crime within our state to that of the USA.

Your argument is idiotic, invalid and I find it really insulting.

I wish those stupid, idiotic, trigger happy yanks could come up with a half decent argument for their right to bear arms. Still that’s asking a bit much, you put them all together in a room and you just might have the makings of a full moron. I except protests, riots & civil war before I see any respectable form of gun control.

And how many school shootings have we had? Oh yeah none! All these shootings in America happen with legally held weapons, some that have no justifiable place outside of the military!

*they

So what your saying is they should have jumped on it from the get go and take advantage of it? Like Obama and his cronies did.

h Dave how the hell did you get that from what I said?
What I was saying is that they obviously took their time to release a statement because they wanted to put alot of thought into it and all they could come up with was a half assed approach to the real issue which I would see is the fact that people can get their hands on a weapon used in warfare that has no real reason to be available for people to “protect” themselves…

the other day I was asked by an American “how do you feel safe in your home without a gun?”. Talk about paranoia.

The antlantic ocean protects us from the majority of nutballs with guns…

They carry concealed why would anyone ever see a gun?Your thinking uniforms and open carry.Which would be a prime target for a shooter to get first.

Then starts the complicated process of working out the ‘good guys’ from the ‘bad guys’. These men talk like big children. “Pew pew”
Guns are a money-making scam, which Americans have ‘bought’ into. There’s absolutely NO Argument for arming the whole population, yet they try to make it. Mainly because they’ve vested interests.
You’ll notice the loudest voices are the gun manufacturers and sellers.
Sure, if you ask the milkman if milk is good for you, what’s he gonna say?

Great point Barry. 100 thumbs up

Just one minor point. One incident of mass-murder in Belgium involved a man who threw grenades into a crowded square before opening up with an automatic firearm into the fleeing crowd. Neither grenades nor automatic weapons are legal there.

That said I do think that firearms should be allowed but either in safe storage or in a dedicated shooting club. I enjoy shooting but I would never store a weapon in my home.

No legislation will prevent all atrocities. That’s not an excuse for inaction. Making guns illegal will not make them impossible to source but it will make it less easy.

I agree with your second point for most guns that have other uses for hunting and other gun sports.

Jason…that’s one incident. There were over 10,000 killed in the US with guns last year. If guns were altogether illegal, I’m sure this figure would immediately be a fraction of that. No, not zero, but a massive massive reduction.

@Brian,

I don’t agree with you at all on that point. Prohibition and the War on Drugs have just proven that outright bans don’t work. Enforcing a total ban on guns, especially in a country such as America, would be a massive and costly undertaking. It would be wholly impractical to remove them and entirely useless as, in the grand scheme of things, they cannot kill without an individual picking it up and choosing to do so. Car accidents kill more people in the US than guns. Cars can also be used for mass murder (as demonstrated in The Netherlands) and can be as expensive as an assault weapon.

Inevitably it is what the human who wields these tools decides what to do with them that is the issue. Banning guns outright is addressing only one of many means to the problem without addressing the actual problem. Especially seeing as other countries with as high a per-capita gun ownership as the US tend to have a fraction of the mortality rate due to guns as America does.

People can red thumb me all they like but it doesn’t change the fact that this is a human problem that won’t be solved by removing one object or another.

It’s a lot easier to kill people with A fully automatic assault rifle than a car,
If we lived in America, you mite get out of the wrong side of the bed 2m buy some breakfast and m16 in the same shop and go on a murdering rampage,
(Completely plausible scenario)

These weapons must be kept out of people’s hands,
The same way nuclear weapons are kept out of some countries hands
The same way cake should be out of obese people’s presses, if its not there it won’t cause a problem, GET IT

@Jason – I think we’re going to disagree regardless, but here are my problems with your last post.
1. This isn’t about prohibition or drugs. But, seeing as how you introduce it, if we take Amsterdam as an example, do you think that if smoking of drugs was totally outlawed in Amsterdam that the incidences of it would rise or go down? I feel pretty sure that they’d go down. Illegal instances would go up but the total number would go down.
2. “Massive and costly undertaking” – we’re talking about the lives of 10,000+ people PER YEAR, not something trivial like cleaning up dog dirt. Millions spent would be worth one life.
3. Car accidents? That is a distraction from the point. This has nothing to do with car accidents. If you feel like addressing that, go ahead and try to do something about it, but it’s not a defence of weapon availability.
4. Perhaps it is a human problem and I can’t explain it, but you haven’t proposed any viable alternatives to resolving this. Removing guns is one way that it could be fixed, and fixed very quickly at that. Imagine a law that made guns illegal and was enforced fully and correctly? No, it won’t eliminate massacres like this, but that 10,000 would be a lot less very quickly.

Barry- If the guy in China had been using a machete the zero’s would be vastly different.

And if he’d had a small arsenal of semi automatic weapons the numbers would be even more vastly different.

I’m glad we agree Dave, the more dangerous the weaponry the more people will die. On the point about cars, they have a very useful alternative purpose as do some guns. However the type of guns we’ve seen used in Sandy Hook and Aurora were designed for a battlefield and have no useful alternative purpose. A friend of mine shot an AK-47 in America. Why anyone would need an AK-47 is beyond me, unless Texas is finally planning to succeed from the Union.

The U.S. has another problem. The sheer number of guns it has, something like 86 guns per 100 people whereas it is 6 guns per hundred in Britain. This means that those people planning a massacre will find guns even if semi-automatic assault rifles are banned. To reduce the the frequency of these instances not just the scale of them, the US will have to start limiting the amount of guns people can buy and be more selective on who they grant gun licences to. Having a gun to protect your home shouldn’t be a justification for obtaining a gun licence. The evidence shows that it puts your family at a greater not lesser risk.

pfft, don’t be silly….

the NRA have a backup plan for when the bad guy has a ak47…the good guy gets an even bigger gun…..if it continuous and the good guy plays it right he’ll have the nuke before the bad guy and everything will be ok.

Unless of course the good guy is nuts, then they are all doomed.

@ Brendan, I was told by a US surgeon that human bodies are pulverised by the multiple high velocity bullets which are unleashed from such guns. His theory was that any sane person who saw the actual results on a human being would not go near a gun.

It is hard to think about the obscenity of the level of violence done to the bodies of those tragic children and their female teachers.

But the men who want their toys and to feel as if they are John Wayne will likely get their way.

Opponents of guns and promoters of effective gun control are depicted as unAmerican and unsound.

Let no one dare to interfere in the relationship between the primarily American males and their multiple guns

put a built in self destruct button on him lol

So what happens when the nut job comes in shooting?Will I guess we saw didn’t we. In fact we have seen it several times,and always in GUN FREE ZONES guess the nut jobs didn’t get the memo OR maybe they did.

No one was armed in CT. what happened?I’ll tell you what happened Lanza was armed anyway.Guess he didn’t play fair.or something.

Impossible I’m afraid seen as there’s probably more guns than people in America. Their right to bear arms is like the first thing in the constitution.

Kevin, their constitution originally stated that you only have the right to bear arms as a member of an organised militia but they changed the constitution in (I think) the 1950’s to allow pretty much anyone to have guns.

They’re damned if they do change the law and damned if they don’t….its just too late for them..

2nd amendment as far as I know

Let them have their guns and their rifles. Outlaw ammunition.
Simples.

Ah right. Well regardless guns arnt going anywhere in America

Not sure what you mean by”war gun”anything that shoots or rather holds two or more cartridges?Any gun “war gun”or not will kill.

The link as mentioned above: http://abcnews.go.com/US/americans-buy-million-guns-november/story?id=17991832#.UNTiWeTeE-C

The republican party believes in the 2nd amendment , if everyone was armed you’d have a lower crime rate and less need for police.

RUBBISH

How many teachers do you think have carry conceal licenses,that would gladly do so if given the chance,don’t know the numbers but you can bet it a good lot.

Well if that’s the case, there is something gravely wrong with the USA society if teachers have to conceal firearms! I’m very glad to be living in Ireland then. The worst that can happen is I will catch a cold from the rain

They don’t really believe in the universal right to bear arms though. No one suggests that kids or convicted felons should be allowed to carry guns.

@ Stanley, what happens if an unstable member of a gun owner’s family steals the guns, or a home is robbed to acquire guns or a normally stable person is immersed in a massive crisis an suddenly goes postal in a terrible way? Even taking into account these questions, there is a lot of practicality in your suggestions.

Hopefully sensible and effective proposals will emerge.

In Switzerland after the Zug massacre, 14 deaths, controls were tightened up and have apparently been effective.

I fully agree with what you are saying and to tell you the truth The only way to totally ensure this problem is eradicated is to remove firearms altogether.
What you have to understand, there is responsible people out there who own firearms.

Ban all firearms. Do you also ban police from carrying firearms?

Ehhhhhhhhh not quite sure what your point is.

Having read most of the comments the main statement that some up the anti gun comments is “Naieve”. Do any of you really understand why the second amendment is so important, why it was added to the constitution. Its not there for hunting or to protect us from each other. Its there to protect the people from its own government. Government gone bad is the general populations biggest threat. Do I have to give examples of this. Do you think you are immune to corrupt governments?

What in the text of the second amendment says an individual has the right to military weapons? The text refers to a well regulated militia, some sort of state or county army of citizens rather than a gun-loving free for all.

Hmmm… Some teachers I had in school who had been driven to mental instability after all the years of dealing with teenagers…shhh, ciúnas, sit down children or I’ll blow your feckin heads off

And the best way to prevent shooting schoolchildren is to keep an armed gunman in the school building.

Don’t forget the male ego, a gun is a lot cheaper than penis enlargement surgery… I’ve checked.

I mean.. my uh, friend checked.

http://guns.ie/~mdennehy/DSCF1906a.JPG

Yup. Male ego, that’s all it is.
Nuanced problem? Needs a solution that might be a few words longer than a soundbite?
Nawwwww, ‘course not. Three drunk lads in an Irish pub could sort this one out before the next round has to be gotten in and they decide who drives home…

If there were no guns, the bad guys wouldn’t have guns in the first place

Sorry I don’t agree with you. The US military just has bigger guns and more ammo!!

*cough*

Go get educated!

http://bigginsblog.wordpress.com/2012/12/17/america-and-guns-presently-the-full-truth/

My eyes are bleeding after reading that page Biggins… You see the irony in recommending that people educate themselves with that page right?

BS!

News and opinion? It’s an Irish site, they’re going to be Irish perspectives. Nearly every other country in the world limits access to guns. No civilised or wealthy country (excluding war zones) has more gun violence than the USA. Most of us have spotted a connection there.

Not entirely true there! I spent 2 years as a conscript in the South African Infantry. I also owned hunting rifles and a couple of hand guns.

Its the way the world works, those that make the most noise get the most attention.
People want to know the killer in order to create a profile and understand the why and how of it all.

Lanza, I imagine, had huge underling childhood issues he felt dealing with in the manner he did would take care of. Its sad because mental health issues play a massive role in this current slaughter event, but who knows if treatment could have been a preventative? We will never know..

You think armed police in schools is a good thing!

Having the caretaker or principal armed and trained in firearms use would be a very effective tool to stop shootings like the awful one recently

Then it leads down to who has the best shot not how can we stop these people committing these horrific crimes?

The conversation should not even be about guns at this stage it should be about the culture and mindset of Americans , these aren’t gangs, they are not uneducated people. Serious questions should be asked about that first.

IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU?????? HAVE LOST YOUR MIND???

Who is this directed at ?

Stephen Church

Have to agree Stanley. Their idea of giving the good guy a bigger gun is crazy. We shouldn’t even listen to them all they want is gun sales increased and nothing more.

Don’t feed.

Unless, obviously, he himself decided to start shooting.

Fort hood is a military installation with probably the best trained military personal in the World.
I rest my case..

There should at least be training for the kids to be able to protect themselves in the event of such an emergency, also, LaPierre has a point, our children are our most precious investment and our heritage, we should be protecting them more than anything else in the world.
School security is not a bad idea for now, its not like they’re going to get rid of all the guns in america anytime soon. its a great shame that the horse has already bolted though :(
Gun turrets on the roof with armed cars patrolling the campuses, I don’t think so, but having a central security station is an excellent idea. We can only hope then that the good guys protecting the innocent don’t one day go bad. In that case, no guns is the best scenario but unfortunately the most unlikely one….