Would gun control help stop incidents like this?

[November Rain]

From Yahoo news

Man kills 5, self at Northern Illinois - Yahoo! News


Man kills 5, self at Northern Illinois
By CARYN ROUSSEAU, Associated Press Writer 12 minutes ago


DEKALB, Ill. - A man dressed in black opened fire with a shotgun and two handguns from the stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University on Thursday, killing five students and injuring 16 others before committing suicide, authorities said.

The gunman fatally shot four women and a man in a "brief, rapid-fire assault" that sent terrified students running for cover, university President John Peters said. Four of the six total dead died at the scene, and the other two died at a hospital, he said.
Witnesses in the geology class said "someone dressed in black came out from behind a screen in front of the classroom and opened fire with a shotgun," Peters said.
Lauren Carr said she was sitting in the third row of the lecture hall around 3 p.m. when she saw the shooter walk through a door on the right-hand side of the stage, pointing a gun straight ahead.
"I personally Army-crawled halfway up the aisle," said Carr, a 20-year-old sophomore. "I said I could get up and run or I could die here."
She said a student in front of her was bleeding, "but he just kept running."
"I heard this girl scream, 'Run, he's reloading the gun.'"
Peters said the gunman was a former graduate student in sociology at NIU, but was not currently enrolled at the 25,000-student campus about 65 miles west of Chicago.
"It appears he may have been a student somewhere else," University Police Chief Donald Grady said, adding that police had no apparent motive.
Seventeen victims were brought to Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb, according to spokeswoman Theresa Komitas. One died, two were admitted and three were discharged; five are being evaluated and six others were transferred to other hospitals in critical condition. At least one male died at OSF St. Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, an official said.
George Gaynor, a senior geography student, who was in Cole Hall when the shooting happened, told the student newspaper the Northern Star that the shooter was "a skinny white guy with a stocking cap on."
He described the scene immediately following the incident as terrifying and chaotic.
"Some girl got hit in the eye, a guy got hit in the leg," Gaynor said outside just minutes after the shooting occurred. "It was like five minutes before class ended too."
Witnesses said the young man carried a shotgun and a pistol. Student Edward Robinson told WLS that the gunman appeared to target students in one part of the lecture hall.
"It was almost like he knew who he wanted to shoot," Robinson said. "He knew who and where he wanted to be firing at."
Jillian Martinez, a freshman from Carpentersville, told the Chicago Tribune she was in the auditorium when the gunman entered through a door to the right of the lectern and opened fire about 3 p.m. "He just started shooting at all the kids," she said. "He just started shooting at people, and I ran out of there as fast as I could. I ran all the way to the student center; when I got there I could still hear shooting (from the classroom).
Agents with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were assisting local authorities at the scene, spokesman Thomas Ahern told the Chicago Tribune.

"We will be urgently tracing the firearms and learning the history of the weapons," Ahern said.
All classes were canceled Thursday night and the campus was closed on Friday. Students were urged to call their parents "as soon as possible" and were offered counseling at any residence hall, according to the school Web site.
The school was closed for one day during final exam week in December after campus police found threats, including racial slurs and references to shootings earlier in the year at Virginia Tech, scrawled on a bathroom wall in a dormitory. Police determined after an investigation that there was no imminent threat and the campus was reopened. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and Thursday's attack.
The shooting was the fourth at a U.S. school within a week. On Feb. 8, a woman shot two fellow students to death before committing suicide at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge. In Memphis, Tenn., a 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically wounding a fellow student Monday during a high school gym class, and the 15-year-old victim of a shooting at an Oxnard, Calif., junior high school has been declared brain dead.




Would gun control stop these shootings from happening?

[AntRobertson]

Would gun control stop these shootings from happening?

I don't think it would stop them altogether. If some nutter's determined enough to go on a rampage they'll find a way regardless.

It would mitigate and perhaps lesson the occurence of them though.

[obsidian]

guns are are huge in the merkan psyche.

[November Rain]

guns are are huge in the merkan psyche.

I must admit, that's something I don't understand - the right to bear arms and the zeal with which that right is defended. When that was instituted, the world was a different place than it is today. With shootings like this, the other school shootings & the recent mall shooting, I find it hard to see how anyone can justify that right.

[obsidian]

you are canadian. merkans are hoplessly in love with bigguns ().

[Hootad Binky]

It's too late; the U.S. in swimming in guns.

[ChiangMai noon]

I think it's also political.

if you say you agree with gun control, then you MUST be a woolie tree hugging liberal poofter democrat..

[chinthee]

This argument has been made a thousand times before. Gun control only works with law abiding citizens, who are rarely the ones causing the trouble.

Guns are readily available anywhere illegally.

[AntRobertson]

Guns are readily available anywhere illegally

That's a bit chicken and eggish though. The guns - in particular handguns - are readily available in the first place because of the relative lack of controls.

[Hootad Binky]

Guns are readily available anywhere illegally.

^ Not in Canada or the UK they aren't, where murder rates are a fraction of what they are per population in the US. And where do handguns used for crime in Canada come from? You guessed it.

Agree with cmn it's a lot to do with politics.

[ChiangMai noon]

Guns are readily available anywhere illegally.

not very readily available in the UK at all.
I'd warrant almost impossible and so expensive as to be impracticable.

it's the ease of access that seems to legitimise these shootings that normal non americans don't understand as well as the obvious disdain for common sense.

[chinthee]

Guns are readily available anywhere illegally

That's a bit chicken and eggish though. The guns - in particular handguns - are readily available in the first place because of the relative lack of controls.

Yes, but as things stand today, there are zillions of handguns floating around. The only way to curtail the availability of illegally obtained handguns would be to outlaw the possession of guns by anyone. Then, anyone caught with one would be subject to punishment.

Not a tenable position in the USA.

[obsidian]

underlying the ease of access is a massive blind spot in the merkan mindset. it is inexplicable. we are ineducable on this point. vomit.

[ChiangMai noon]

would be to outlaw the possession of guns by anyone. Then, anyone caught with one would be subject to punishment.

and??

[AntRobertson]

not very readily available in the UK at all.

Ditto New Zealand. Occassionally the Police will turn up a handgun somewhere or other and it's - almost always and quite literally - front page news.

Owning a firearm is restricted to Police checked and approved licensing and handguns are outlawed period (except to licensed collectors). Consequently the murder rate by guns is very low.

[Hootad Binky]

underlying the ease of access is a massive blind spot in the merkan mindset. it is inexplicable. we are ineducable on this point. vomit.

The War of Independence, I believe...

so... it's Britain's fault!

[Texpat]

If you say you agree with gun control, then you MUST be a woolie tree hugging liberal poofter democrat..

Not this moderate conservative. Guns solve far fewer problems than they create. I've never owned a gun and probably never will. Never owned an American flag either.

Guns are like drugs though. Making them illegal doesn't mean they go away.

I don't like drugs either.

[obsidian]

how to you feel about panties?

[ChiangMai noon]

Making them illegal doesn't mean they go away.

I guess that's down to law enforcement and political will.
You don't catch Saudis drinking on street corners.

[Texpat]

Right, they go to Bangkok to do that.

[Texpat]

how to you feel about panties?

Ever heard of the panty hose strangler? A lady in a Dayton Ohio suburb, circa 1972, killed nearly 20 men by strangling them with her panty hose.

Her legs were still in them.

Seriously though, I wouldn't be opposed to outlawing panties either.

[chinthee]

Making them illegal doesn't mean they go away.

I guess that's down to law enforcement and political will.
You don't catch Saudis drinking on street corners.

The whole debate is pretty silly. licensed gun owners rarely cause the trouble, so the only way is to ban guns entirely. Then, make the enforcement tough and make it a felony to possess. That just drives guns to the black market and drives prices up. It would take decades and decades of such enforcement to actually rid the country of guns, and in that case, only the real bad guys would have them. Not something the average American would like to see.

But, this is so far from being a realistic solution that it is hardly worth the effort of punching out this line.

America's gun situation cannot be easily solved. The right to bear arms is too deeply ingrained into the country and its people.

[AntRobertson]

America's gun situation cannot be easily solved. The right to bear arms is too deeply ingrained into the country and its people.

Granted there's no 'quick-fix' but when does the status-quo become untenable? How many people have to be shot before something's done?

[ChiangMai noon]

That just drives guns to the black market and drives prices up.

and that's a bad thing?

The right to bear arms is too deeply ingrained into the country and its people.

so was the right to drink alcohol and drive a car until fairly recently in the UK.
tougher sentences plus the will to make it a socially inexcusable piece of behaviour has all but marginalised it.
it would take several generations probably.

[chinthee]

^^Seems as though America has lived with gun-toting mass murderers for many decades now.