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Bullet Proof Kids Backpacks? Really?


Fana McCloud

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So I think we've all heard about the grade school kids in Connecticut that got shot up. That... just hit a new level of low for me. High school shootings make some minutiae of sense (bullied teenagers wanting revenge and whatnot), but some outsider, an adult, coming in and shooting up YOUNG kids? That made my brain hit a new level of FUCK right there.

 

But of course what do we do in response to this tragedy? Blame video games and start buying BULLETPROOF BACKPACKS in mass quantities apparently. Really? We're gonna encourage consumerism and blame an industry that competes with one's own (the media companies that own the news stations spewing this nonsense)? This, THIS makes me 'effin sick.

 

You think I'm joking about the bulletproof backpacks, don't you? Prepare to be proven wrong:

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/12/body-armor-backpack-sandy-hook-sales-soar

 

And Totalbiscuit did a rather nice video on the misplaced blame on video games:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uwAo8lcAC4

 

And of course on the liberal side I see morons going "OH MAH GAWD, WE NEED GUN CONTROL!"

 

No, no, no, no, NO. What we NEED to do is to acknowledge that the guy who shot up these kids was mentally DERANGED and needed MENTAL HELP. If there are no guns with which to shoot up schools they'll still be trying to carve up their families with kitchen knives. The problem is not guns, the core problem is that our ability to identify and treat mental conditions before they blow up into this kinda stuff is absolutely laughable. Some people are just born nuts, there's just no way around that. They are determined to kill, and they'll do it even if all they have with which to do so is their bare hands.

 

I found a blog post (it's gotten around quite a bit now) from a mother who has just such a child:

http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/12/thinking-unthinkable.html

 

Now am I saying that there shouldn't be controls on firearms? Absolutely not. But let's have them make sense. Limiting the TYPES of weapons people can get will do diddly squat, a gun is a gun and they can kill mass quantities of UNARMED people with a pistol just as easily as an AK. Doing background checks for purchasing firearms won't stop a young person without a record from buying them or using guns belonging to their relatives or other people to get around it if they do have a record. Banning guns outright will ensure that only criminals possess them, because they don't give two shits about laws and disarming their potential victims only makes their victims that much more helpless.

 

What we need to do is make sure that we have a mental health system that isn't a freakin joke, and a populace that is educated about warning signs and just how IMPORTANT it is to tell mental health officials about people they see these signs in (for the love of god NOT the police unless the threat is immediate, I've seen people's attempts to report people they thought were troublesome turn into overblown stuff over harmless people). Make sure that the public education campaign is thorough and helps people more clearly identify true warning signs over temporary anger in normal people. Make sure that people know HOW to get help and that it does exist. Then we won't need stupid gun bans because we'll be identifying and treating these people early, BEFORE they can kill people.

 

If my childhood could be saturated by PSAs with cartoon dinosaurs telling me how important it is to brush my teeth, then surely we can do the same for this issue instead of turning this into just another excuse to make money by politicizing the crap out of it and driving fear into people.

 

Except I forgot - we don't care about people anymore, just the almighty dollar. Jesus freakin' Christ.

 

Other thoughts on this?

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Guns don't kill people, people do.

 

Cliche as it sounds, it's true. The person responsible for the massacre is primarily responsible. A completely sane person who possesses a gun for the purpose of self defense wouldn't go on a massacre, only a maniac would.

 

We can't fix people, and sadly situations such as this are as intricate, if not more intricate, than even say - internet piracy. We can educate people about firearms as would one educate a child about brushing one's teeth. (As you put it.) But in the end, it's going to come down to the same old story. They'll do it anyway, think about alcohol, drug ridden teens. Same can be said about firearms, they'll want to try them.

 

Issues such as this can't really be fixed. Unless it's over a massive amount of time.

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I don't understand why--no I suppose I can. I can't believe that--no I  can believe too.... I suppose I should say I find it highly amusing that we've gotten to a point where Bullet Proof Backpacks for kids not only sounds mundane, but almost like a good idea. Shootings so common that we need to protect our own children from massacres and not just ourselves.

 

Anyway, I'm a liberal, but I'm not liberal on guns. I think that people should have the right to own the firearms they want to as long as they don't shoot them blindly like morons, but I can understand why some people wouldn't want high-powered rifles on sale and relatively easy to acquire. Nobody truly needs a weapon that fires 800 rounds per minute, but at the same time I still think people should be allowed to have one if they so desire, and I can also see your point about how limiting weapons won't stop crime completely. A dedicated killer like Adam Lanza will still have taken the lives of many even with something like a knife or a sword.
 

Let's face it, nothing is to blame here but the man himself. It's not guns, it's not books, it's not the media, it was the fact that Adam was mentally unstable. He was not persuaded or fooled into committing this act, and he did it on his own volition. With that said, I don't see a solution. Whether that be for lack of experience on my part, or simply because one is not apparent, I am unsure how problems related to mental illness in people otherwise stable could be solved. I don't believe that a large portion of the population will ever take the life of another human being, but of the ones who can; I don't see a means of stopping them from doing so other than forcibly. Perhaps one of you see's one, however.

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I don't think guns and video games are really the issue here. Why cure the symptom and not the disease?

 

I have aspergers, but I don't let it have me. You can call it a disorder or syndrome, it is a disease and something I struggle with daily. Putting a ban on automatic weaponry won't solve the problem, it won't even be counted as progress. Outlaw something and the black market will just benefit more from the struggle while idiotic political wackiness ensues.

 

I don't know, maybe we should ban shovels and cars and hands too for f*cksake, they kill more people then a asperger guy with a glock. It won't do any good. But what will?

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It is simply incredible when we observe the lengths people go to in order to ignore the truth for so long.  Blame popular media, blame firearms, blame whatever the hell you want to - just don't address the real issue here.  Mental health needs to be looked at more in-depth in the United States; once we unlock the human mind we can start going places.

 

[Also, watching this thread closely - do try to keep it civil!]

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When I first heard about this, my first thought was "what in the actual fuck, how can someone do that"

 

My second thought was "Here comes the gun control petitions and using video games as the scapegoat"

 

My hypothesis was correct.

 

First of all: I haven't watched the video but bulletproof backpacks sounds completely stupid to me, since in all honesty you don't need too much protection on the back. Second of all, guns don't kill people, people kill people. You don't buy a gun and go think "I'm going to go shoot up a school now!". There is premeditation involved in this sort of thing, it wasn't just because he had the opportunity to do so. I agree with Fana on this one, you have to be completely deranged to do something like this. Neither guns nor violence in the media make you deranged. Being deranged makes you deranged.

 

In all honesty there's not much you can do about this short of sending kids to school in bomb squad suits, because if someone wants to go on a murder rampage and thinks about it beforehand, they will find a way to do so. This guy didn't just do this on a whim. The school had some pretty fucking impermeable security in place and he managed to get in with a gun. That implies that maybe we should be careful about what deranged looking strangers we let in the back door, but doesen't say anything about gun control. If anything we should mentally screen our gun purchasers to make sure they aren't psychopaths when they buy them. Otherwise banning home firearms or censoring violent media isn't going to much.

 

That was probably a little ramble-y and confusing but you get my point. People kill people, the killer was a psychopath, and media has nothing to do with it. The end.

 

Oh, and bulletproof backpacks is a fucking stupid idea on par with Doritos mouthwash.

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Doritos mouthwash.

 

Really they make that? Ah gawd why?

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Guns don't kill people, people do.

 

Would people stop saying this? It's completely inane. Yes, people kill people...using guns. Guns that are way too easily obtained by mentally disturbed people who want to off a bunch of children.

 

"B-but they'll just find ANOTHER weapon to kill people!"

 

Yeah, but you know, as that guy in China who went on a stabbing spree the same day proved with his all of 0 fatalities, guns are pretty much the go-to weapon for killing as many people as easily possible.

 

The fact is, shooting sprees and firearm homicides in general have reached an insane frequency in the United States. No, it's not as simple just to say "well guns are obviously the problem" but considering they're pretty instrumental in this statistic, they are sure as fuck part of it and adding more of them to the situation is not going to help. It's sickening to look at this country, an hour after twenty children were gunned down, and see people screaming ARE GUNS instead of realizing that their selfishness may be a contributor to the problems we as a society are facing.

 

So again, no, it's not just guns, but guns are a big part of it. Why?

 

America has a victim complex, it believes in black-and-white good and evil, and it's struggling with the concept of masculinity right now. Take a look at this:

 

http://25.media.tumblr.com/394f10026528918ef307c8ffb92cbd7c/tumblr_mf6qq9kcpa1qzp1zzo1_500.jpg

 

This is an advertisement for the gun that Adam Lanza used to kill 20 children and half as many adults. Look at how it's being advertised.

 

This is not a hunting tool, it is not an item for sport, and it is not marketed to those who are vulnerable and in need of defence. It is marketing itself on "look at how much of an awesome MAYUN you will be when you BUY ARE GUNS". It's feeding the overhyped power fantasy of the average American, trying to validate them by telling them they're a perfect little badass as long as they can look like the heroes in their war games. And yes, war games. No, I do not believe that it's the fault of video games that people are inclined to violence. However, I believe that violent people are drawn to violent video games, and the cultural obsession with games like Call of Duty is disconcerting. Obviously, not everyone who owns a gun or plays a violent game will commit an atrocious act, but many of them do support the culture that influences those like the Newtown shooter. They are trying to shirk responsibility by defending the contributing factors of a culture that says it's okay to prioritize your weapon ownership over the safety of elementary students.

 

"Some people are just born nuts" does not appreciate the situation and is kind of insulting to other people who suffer from Asperger's, like Lanza did. He did not do this because he had Asperger's. He may have been easily influenced because of it, but that was not the core reason. There isn't just a simple "crazy gene" that people either have or don't. It's systematic, and it is a response. Yes, there is not nearly enough mental health help in North America, period. In fact, the attention paid to mental health is completely abysmal. But I'm completely baffled that people are saying "we need to talk about mental health!" and dismissing these shooters as "just a crazy person" in the same breath, because you are a) equating all mentally ill to murderers and b) saying we need to talk about mental health, while othering people with mental health problems. You can't have both.

 

If I can make an armchair diagnosis, it was not Lanza's Asperger's that drove him to do what he did. It just might have made him more susceptible to the pressures put on him by America's obsession with machismo, like you can see in the ad for his murder weapon.

 

There is a reason the rest of the developed world is giving you a huge "WTF" look, America. You need to talk about mental health, AND you need to talk about what it means for you to be "American" and to be "men"...and if it's worth the safety of others.

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[insert impressive and incredibly well-thought out wall of text HERE]

 

Even I admit that the 'people kill people' argument is farfetched at best, though I will disagree with other points made.  Firearms are currently the go-to weapon for mass fatalities because they are, for the most part, readily available within the United States - both legally and illegally.  If they were limited or banned completely, then those looking to cause damage will find other means in which to do so; you simply take one avenue of death out of the equation even though there are many more available.  The automobile, for example.  Take the Oklahoma City Bombing in another case; mass destruction brought about by a different method - those that wish to do harm to society will find their ways.  This goes on to assume that prohibition will not have any negative effects - it is relatively clear that prohibition often does not solve problems.  Mexico has some of the strictest firearm control in the world, and yet also happens to have the murder capital of the world and some of the worst violence on a daily basis - firearms would continue to proliferate from there into the United States through gangs, smugglers, illegal manufacturers, etc.     

 

The overall culture of the United States is a vastly complex and ever-changing system that is never stable for all that long; because of the incredible amount of different nationalities and ideals circulating throughout the country opinions always differ and the USA will never be a collectivist-opinion society.  The protection-of-masculinity notion is deeply rooted throughout American society in addition to this; nearly every product under the sun with a male-dominated purchasing demographic has these same types of macho man butch ads - that doesn't appear like it will change anytime soon.  Mental health reform is something this country also desperately needs, yet is constantly cutting funding for when attempting to hold the budget together long enough to stave off destruction.  

 

I do recall that with an interview with Lanza's barber, the barber continually articulated the fact that Lanza would not speak at all even when directly addressed or joked with; his mother was the one that did the talking.  Without knowing more about the killer's life we are unable to come to valid conclusions other than he committed several counts of homicide in what may just be the worst killing in recent memory.  Though your thought process is indeed an interesting one, I think that placing the blame squarely on just male-centric American culture is not addressing the entire problem; this would imply that every male currently residing in the United States and integrated within the culture are all egotistical snobs - far from the truth.        

 

And one large problem that I have with firearm-restricting legislation in the United States is that oftentimes those that put these notions into laws have no idea what they are doing.  Take the now infamous Brady Assault Weapons ban; items such as pistol-grips and folding/extending stocks were prohibited that have nothing to do with a gun's lethality.  They simply look more intimidating, and that was what the law seemed based off of. 

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Well off the topic of gun controll and returning the actual back packs.... how could they ever be expected to be effective. They only over a part of the body.

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Would people stop saying this? It's completely inane. Yes, people kill people...using guns. Guns that are way too easily obtained by mentally disturbed people who want to off a bunch of children.

 

Yeah using guns, that's stating the obvious, the question is why do people kill people? Would they use a knife instead if they didn't have access to firearms? Or would they do something else entirely that isn't even murder? Honestly, we'll never know. And to stop a shooting from its root is like trying to nip a flower before it blooms. You don't quite know when the event may happen. One guy just wanted to be remembered, if he didn't have access to a firearm, maybe he would have done something else to be remembered, or maybe if murder was on his mind, he would have just use a different weapon. Maybe he would have been that guy in china with zero fatalities, or who knows - maybe he would have been this era's jack the ripper reincarnate. We certainly remember jack the ripper. So yeah, guns don't kill people, PEOPLE DO.

 

A masculinity complex?

 

If that's the issue, I don't think someone would shoot a bunch of little children, that's hardly manly at all, in fact if Adam Lanza had wanted to be more 'manly' by using that gun after seeing that advertisement, maybe he would have used it on a shooting range, or better yet - may be join the army to shoot a bigger, more bad ass gun? I mean man, shooting little children whilst compared to blowing the crap out of enemy aircraft - no, just no, that is not the reason. It is not manly to shoot little children. There's something called common sense, even culture can't overcome that aspect of our humanity. No one goes into a school and guns down a bunch of kids to become more manly, why did he shoot himself in the end? Was it guilt? Was it the fact he realized I would no longer have a life? We won't know any of this.

 

And of course just saying 'he's crazy' is not the answer, he had a freaking reason for killing those kids, just like the guy that wanted to be remembered, right?

 

We can enforce stricter gun laws, to stop the bullets from reaching the victim's heads. It's all we can do. I'm starting to realize that this is like cancer, shrink the symptom, ,make less pain, suppress the disease.

 

We can also implement some better mental health care practices, since we're in desperate need for a reform, as crazyfoonic stated.

 

And we can do ten million other things that I do not care to list here.

 

But then again, there is no solid cure, there's no answer to this really, we can treat the symptom in a variety of ways, but in the end we may create more problems by doing so. So I will stop here by saying,  lets leave it to the experts, because lets be honest, we know almost nothing about these things. It would be foolish to draw up our own solutions. We can state the obvious, but it will do no good.

 

EDIT: backpacks? You know something, I'm just going to bang my head against the wall, the complexity of this mass shooting thing is annoying me. I guess next will be bullet proof bike helmets, or maybe bullet proof paper to doodle on as you work, or wait lets make pencil guns, yeah totally effective. AIEEEEEEEEEEE. The madness of it all.

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Bulletproof backpacks are a fucking retarded idea, they don't even protect the entire body from gunfire. >_>

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Even I admit that the 'people kill people' argument is farfetched at best, though I will disagree with other points made.  Firearms are currently the go-to weapon for mass fatalities because they are, for the most part, readily available within the United States - both legally and illegally.  If they were limited or banned completely, then those looking to cause damage will find other means in which to do so; you simply take one avenue of death out of the equation even though there are many more available.  The automobile, for example.  Take the Oklahoma City Bombing in another case; mass destruction brought about by a different method - those that wish to do harm to society will find their ways.

 

Adam Lanza was an 18 year old mentally disturbed child who somehow managed to obtain an assault rifle. He isn't some amorphous gangster/terrorist. He was a disturbed teenager who easily obtained an extremely dangerous weapon. There is something very, very wrong with that.

 

To compare it to a bombing is also a little bizarre. One thwarted bomb attempt means we all have to take off our shoes at the airport, and innocent sculptors are paid surprise visits by Homeland Security because they use materials that look a little too bomb-like when they place their orders. It takes one forgotten suitcase in transit to have an entire station locked down because of the possibility of it being a bomb.

 

But it is perfectly easy, and even legal, for an eighteen year old with mental problems to get an assault rifle, and people are defending his ability to do so. Son, that's fucked up.

 

This goes on to assume that prohibition will not have any negative effects - it is relatively clear that prohibition often does not solve problems.  Mexico has some of the strictest firearm control in the world, and yet also happens to have the murder capital of the world and some of the worst violence on a daily basis - firearms would continue to proliferate from there into the United States through gangs, smugglers, illegal manufacturers, etc.     

 

Why are you comparing the United States to Mexico? For the position of the ol' US-of-A in this world, you'd probably want to look at most of Europe, or Canada, where we sure do have gun laws and we sure do not have exorbitantly high homicide rates.

 

Adam Lanza was not a gang member or smuggler or whatever. Neither was James Holmes. The guy who decides to pop off his adulterous wife with the handgun in the cupboard is not a gang member or a smuggler.

 

This is what I mean--this argument is what I referenced when I mentioned America's obsession with good versus evil. When we talk about firearm control, it's suddenly "but all them gangbangers and master criminals and terrorists will get them anyway", all these references to some amorphous action movie bad guy who are most certainly not the subject of the current conversation. It's discounting the fact that very many of the people who are killing people with guns are teenagers, are college students, are middle aged accountants or otherwise. And they are often using guns that were purchased entirely legally.

 

I also never said BAN ALL THE GUNS!!!, which will be impossible and anyone who thinks the American government is literally going to send door-to-door agents out to collect all 'yer guns are probably feeling really toasty under their tinfoil hats about now.

 

Now, I want you to look at what you said here:

 

 The protection-of-masculinity notion is deeply rooted throughout American society in addition to this; nearly every product under the sun with a male-dominated purchasing demographic has these same types of macho man butch ads - that doesn't appear like it will change anytime soon.

 

And what you said here:

 

I think that placing the blame squarely on just male-centric American culture is not addressing the entire problem; this would imply that every male currently residing in the United States and integrated within the culture are all egotistical snobs - far from the truth.        

 

And think about what you've done, good sir.

 

No, I'm not saying ALL MEN KILL THE MEN ALL MEN ARE PIGS, and to gather that interpretation from my attack on dudebro/machismo-culture is a bit of a stretch, when my attack on such was directed on that alone. But that brings me to another point--media is still not without influence, and to discount that is to either live and delusion or to underestimate the stupidity of the consumer.

 

And one large problem that I have with firearm-restricting legislation in the United States is that oftentimes those that put these notions into laws have no idea what they are doing.  Take the now infamous Brady Assault Weapons ban; items such as pistol-grips and folding/extending stocks were prohibited that have nothing to do with a gun's lethality.  They simply look more intimidating, and that was what the law seemed based off of. 

 

That's a problem with that individual law, not the notion of the law itself. That's a really bizarre solution to something that wasn't a problem, but just because someone fucked it up doesn't mean it's impossible to make a law that isn't completely backass stupid.

 

@crapcat:

 

Yeah using guns, that's stating the obvious, the question is why do people kill people? Would they use a knife instead if they didn't have access to firearms? Or would they do something else entirely that isn't even murder? Honestly, we'll never know. And to stop a shooting from its root is like trying to nip a flower before it blooms. You don't quite know when the event may happen. One guy just wanted to be remembered, if he didn't have access to a firearm, maybe he would have done something else to be remembered, or maybe if murder was on his mind, he would have just use a different weapon. Maybe he would have been that guy in china with zero fatalities, or who knows - maybe he would have been this era's jack the ripper reincarnate. We certainly remember jack the ripper. So yeah, guns don't kill people, PEOPLE DO.

 

I directly referenced someone "using a knife instead" in my first post, you reference him in your post, and you still mysteriously continue the argument "he could have used a knife instead!"

 

In case Google is too much of a foreign concept, let me tell you exactly what happened. In gun-restricted China, mere hours after the Newtown Shooting, a man went on a stabbing spree and injured 22 children. There were zero fatalities. If that had been a gun, there would have been fatalities. Discounting the fact that guns were invented to kill people and knives have practical, non-murdery application, knives are basically useless in a spree attack. In this regard, guns are entirely more dangerous if "people who want to kill people" have access to them.

 

You also can't compare an English serial killer in a time before guns really even existed in a convenient or popularized form to a string of spree killings in America over a hundred years later in an entirely different social climate involving more than one perpetrator.

 

A masculinity complex?

 

If that's the issue, I don't think someone would shoot a bunch of little children, that's hardly manly at all, in fact if Adam Lanza had wanted to be more 'manly' by using that gun after seeing that advertisement, maybe he would have used it on a shooting range, or better yet - may be join the army to shoot a bigger, more bad ass gun? I mean man, shooting little children whilst compared to blowing the crap out of enemy aircraft - no, just no, that is not the reason. It is not manly to shoot little children. There's something called common sense, even culture can't overcome that aspect of our humanity. No one goes into a school and guns down a bunch of kids to become more manly, why did he shoot himself in the end? Was it guilt? Was it the fact he realized I would no longer have a life? We won't know any of this.

 

That's not the point, like, at all, and I'm not just referring to Lanza, I'm referring to the majority of fedora-toting gun nuts who think they'd totally be able to kill forty guys if they robbed him right now and who think it's more important to own guns than protect children, who--perhaps unwittingly--are excusing part of the reason that these things happen. Obviously other factors went into what Lanza did, but do you really think it's impossible that a quiet, bullied, emotionally and mentally unstable teenager would get a very wrong idea on how he could prove how "tough" he is?

 

I could get into America's current weird homophobic/misogynist obsession with BEING A MAN but that's almost an entirely new topic.

 

But then again, there is no solid cure, there's no answer to this really, we can treat the symptom in a variety of ways, but in the end we may create more problems by doing so. So I will stop here by saying,  lets leave it to the experts, because lets be honest, we know almost nothing about these things. It would be foolish to draw up our own solutions. We can state the obvious, but it will do no good.

 

Apathy isn't a cure, and no one will look for the cure if the majority is apathetic. Instead, we'll just wind up with band-aid after band-aid in the form of stupid bullet-proof backpacks.

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This debate will go on forever. It's a sensitive subject, but let it be discussed.

 

 

I directly referenced someone "using a knife instead" in my first post, you reference him in your post, and you still mysteriously continue the argument "he could have used a knife instead!"

 

In case Google is too much of a foreign concept, let me tell you exactly what happened. In gun-restricted China, mere hours after the Newtown Shooting, a man went on a stabbing spree and injured 22 children. There were zero fatalities. If that had been a gun, there would have been fatalities. Discounting the fact that guns were invented to kill people and knives have practical, non-murdery application, knives are basically useless in a spree attack. In this regard, guns are entirely more dangerous if "people who want to kill people" have access to them.

 

You also can't compare an English serial killer in a time before guns really even existed in a convenient or popularized form to a string of spree killings in America over a hundred years later in an entirely different social climate involving more than one perpetrator.

 

Firstly, Adam Lanza was twenty years old. Secondly, you referenced the knife to being something largely in effective, so I gave you an example of someone who was effective at using it. Sadly if that chinese man had planned his attacks, and learned the human body's weak points, he may have been to go on a much more gruesome massacre, he certainly may not have caused many fatalities, but people would have died none the less. If murder had been the first thing on his mind, and he could not gain access to a firearm, he would have used something else.

 

I believe this is a place for debate, not insults. But I know what happened, so please for the love of god save yourself a paragraph in an attempt to make yourself seem more smart and make me look like an complete idiot.

 

You're right about your third statement, but my point remains the same, knives can easily be used to go on a massacre, even though one's strategy in doing so can be different.

 

 

That's not the point, like, at all, and I'm not just referring to Lanza, I'm referring to the majority of fedora-toting gun nuts who think they'd totally be able to kill forty guys if they robbed him right now and who think it's more important to own guns than protect children, who--perhaps unwittingly--are excusing part of the reason that these things happen. Obviously other factors went into what Lanza did, but do you really think it's impossible that a quiet, bullied, emotionally and mentally unstable teenager would get a very wrong idea on how he could prove how "tough" he is?

 

I could get into America's current weird homophobic/misogynist obsession with BEING A MAN but that's almost an entirely new topic.

 

And then the other guy in Australia just wanted to be remembered, is it impossible? I hate to say this, but nothing is impossible. But honestly you did not deny that killing children with a semi automatic is not manly at all, I don't see kids running away from a rambo in advertisements now do I? Maybe he did have the wrong idea, but at most I highly doubt it. If he was quiet, bullied, and emotionally and mentally unstable, maybe he just wanted something more simple, like revenge in some shape or form, maybe he wanted to fix something. Or who the fuck knows, maybe he wanted to become more manly by killing someone clearly weaker than himself, maybe he was THAT insecure. And oh, then by the way, he shot himself. He's a cowardly bastard who probably knew he committed a crime, and didn't want to face punishment.

 

 

Apathy isn't a cure, and no one will look for the cure if the majority is apathetic. Instead, we'll just wind up with band-aid after band-aid in the form of stupid bullet-proof backpacks.

 

Then you show me the cure, show me what you have, show me what works. We can stop massacres like this by making guns harder to acquire for the general public. There is no fucking cure for stuff like this, it's been happening since the beginning of time. What we can do, is treat the symptom to make a safer world for us. It's hardly apathetic at all, it's realistic, in order to make a cure, we'd need to 'cure' every person on Earth, that's not going to happen.

 

And sure people will get pissed off at such a law, sure people will not be able to defend themselves from lets say, a real criminal who knows his shit, but then again, we never talk about that crap do we? No, we speak about the twenty dead kids who went to a school.

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But it is perfectly easy, and even legal, for an eighteen year old with mental problems to get an assault rifle, and people are defending his ability to do so. Son, that's fucked up.

 

Um, I'm not defending that. I think that mental disorders should be taken into account, make it a routine check just like criminal background. I'm defending OTHER peoples' rights to have firearms, the people for whom it wouldn't be dangerous. The general focus of the current crusade to ban firearms is to ban them for everyone, and that's what I think most of us object to.

 

Our culture is also indeed messed up, but maybe addressing that instead of screaming about guns is the more reasonable course of action. Guns will always be needed, and lots of people like having guns for recreational and protective reasons, this will never change. We CAN try to slowly but surely change our culture to a more positive one, a more caring one that ditches the machismo BS. If Canada can have significantly smaller amounts of firearm deaths and still have lots of guns like we do then it IS possible. Our culture leads to rises in mental illness yet the only thought is to do anything and everything that only deprives the victims - both the mentally ill we create by villainizing them instead of helping them and the people at large by taking away their freedoms and sanity bit by bit by not correcting our larger cultural awareness issues and instead telling them to either take away a huge amount of our liberties, or otherwise always be fearful - and oh yeah, buy kevlar backpacks.

 

Our messed up culture is terrorizing us in more ways than just increased gun violence, people are being more inhumane towards each other in general, so I think that's a far more important issue to address because it improves everyone's lives so much more than banning guns alone would, and banning them would be a moot point anyway if our culture were improved.

 

 

And as for the people here going “WTF, those backpacks don't make sense!†the bulletproof backpacks protect a great portion of the body. They made them with the intention that it could either protect a kid's torso while they're running away, making a headshot the only likely way to down the kid, or it could be brought forward as a shield to protect the center of mass which is like the largest and most vital area of the body. They can be pretty effective, I just question why we aren't addressing the real issue is all. Plus I hate it when peddlers take advantage of fear and hysteria to sell products, it makes my blood boil. : /

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There's actually been an update that Lanza may have wanted to join the military. So I was right in my assumptions, why not just join the military? Drasiana may have some plausibility in her statement of masculinity, but the reason why he wanted to join the military, remains unknown. He could easily just wanted to be important, or he may have just wanted to kill people, we don't exactly know. Or who knows, maybe he wanted to be chuck norris.

 

 

 

And as for the people here going “WTF, those backpacks don't make sense!†the bulletproof backpacks protect a great portion of the body. They made them with the intention that it could either protect a kid's torso while they're running away, making a headshot the only likely way to down the kid, or it could be brought forward as a shield to protect the center of mass which is like the largest and most vital area of the body. They can be pretty effective, I just question why we aren't addressing the real issue is all. Plus I hate it when peddlers take advantage of fear and hysteria to sell products, it makes my blood boil. : /

 

 

And honestly, you're right. What direction is the logical direction to go in? The other way, so maybe these backpacks do help. But still, it doesn't treat the situation as a whole, we need to stop the bullets from being fired in the first place. But none the less, it's all we can do - at least for now.

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   I'm sorry, but if I have to hear on the news one more damn time how the human spirit is bulletproof, I'll lock myself in the bathroom and scream my head off.

 

   Great, now theres a stigma growing now about people with asperger. Wonderful. Now if I get quit from my present job and they ask me that guestion, "Do you have apergers?"

I will have to answer, "yes, I do", how are people gonna look at me?

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Great, now theres a stigma growing now about people with asperger. Wonderful. Now if I get quit from my present job and they ask me that guestion, "Do you have apergers?"

I will have to answer, "yes, I do", how are people gonna look at me?

 

Actually, you don't have to answer that question because it is illegal for any employer to ask it to begin with (in the United States, anyway).

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My sister's majoring in psychology, and she says that virtually all of the community agrees that it's impossible Lanza had Aspergers. In the autism specter, patients aren't capable of doing harm to anyone, no exceptions. Her guess is that it was most likely something on the schizoid side or a psychotic break. On the gun matter, I def. think that ones needs to proof their mental health beforehand. (Lanza apparently would've been a-ok to buy firearms) I think that alone would be a huge step forward to the solution to this problematic.

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The unpredictability of these things is what makes them so hard to tackle. Sometimes you have no clue of what's happening until its too late. By the end of the day, you still know almost nothing, or at least nothing useful.

 

In Lanza's case, no one suspected in their wildest dreams that he would go on a massacre.

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Aha! It took some looking into, given that the RynoHide bullet resistant stuff uses something I was unfamiliar with, Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs), but I found out what I was looking for. CNTs can provide great penetration resistance, but they still suffer from the problem that other ballistic vests (with the exception of only Dragon Skin armour as far as I know) is that the impact force can still cause serious internal injury, plus they haven't said up to what caliber it can stop. Dragon Skin, on the other hand, blew my mind when they were the first ballistic vest proven to be able to stop a 7.62x51mm NATO (.308 Winchester) round without the use of extra plates put into the vest. This went on when, after a bit of research, it turns out it can stop a .30-06 Springfield round. To put this in perspective, .30-06 is 7.62x63mm. It has a lot more power behind it. Dragon Skin has also been shown to take entire magazines of 9x19mm Parabellum fired from an MP5 without failing, but then, on the same vest that just became riddled with bullets, they set off a standard issue fragmentation grenade, and the vest still did not fail. It was destroyed in the process, but it did not fail all the same and if someone were in it, they more than likely would not of died. This is largely because Dragon Skin absorbs a large amount of the impact force, from what I understand. About 60% of it, iirc.

 

Anyways, back to the backpack. It seems like it could withstand most pistol bullets and using it as they demonstrated on their site, as a shield rather than wearing it, it wouldn't cause internal injuries, though it does provide a problem in that if someone actually wanted to shoot whoever had it, then it wouldn't be hard to defeat the "shield." Anyways, the price is pretty decent (which is something that's a problem with Dragon Skin, which is priced at $5000 and up), but I can't help feel that if you want bullet resistant protection, just get a vest. It'd likely be the more reliable form of defense.

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Thats it, from now on I'll make my own clothes from spider silk. (No I won't)

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Thats it, from now on I'll make my own clothes from spider silk. (No I won't)

 

Good luck with that, haha. Takes years and millions of spiders to make an 11' x 4' piece of textile.

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  • 2 weeks later...

   Whenever something like this happens, death involving kids, the parents ALWAYS have a solution. One minute its bulletproof backpacks then its GPS bracelets.

 

   One time, these kids were in a group by a rail yard (don't remember where) and get run over by a train. The next day, one of the mothers whined how the freight-lines should have signs that say, 'Don't be on the tracks, little preteen girl.'

 

 

   What in the absolute hell is wrong with you?!!

 

 

   First of all, your kid was out of the house at 3 AM with her friends doing hell knows what.

 

   Second, freight train lines are an obviously dangerous place and DO have warning signs posted.

 

   Thirdly, dumb parents don't pay attention to whatever their kids are doing, whether online or late at night.

 

   And finally parents should talk to their children, not being an overbearing gestapo hardass, but getting to know them personally and find out what makes them tick. Be MORE than just a dad or a mom, be their friends too, where else are they gonna learn how to be a man or woman? Parents should know this long before they become responsible for another life.

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Bullet-proof backpacks eh?

 

No biggie. Sure it's an over reaction but that's all it is. And someone decided to take the reaction of the shooting and used it for a marketing idea. Also, wouldn't a bullet-proof vest be over 30 pounds? Unless this child has some abs there is no way he could wear that all day. Still ...

 

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Now on the issue of gun control, I'd say I'm in between the two points.

 

                     About here  â†“

(More Gun Control - - - - - - - - - - Less Gun Control)

 

Because I think I have realized a stunning fact that all of the debating and arguing about gun control is, in the grand scheme of all things, just crap. Now there are good points on both sides over the case, but can we really get to the point where we can be happy with/without the restriction on guns? Take away and X gets mad, add more and Y gets pissed. A constant tug of war. The End.

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