AR-15 similar to that allegedly carried by James Holmes (CCL Mike Petrucci)
Here we go again: Lax gun laws allowed a lone gunman to shoot and kill 12 people in. . . . Oh, wait, that was actually in Cumbria, England summer before last.
The headline in The Times of London read, by the way, “Toughest Laws in the World Could Not Stop Cumbria Tragedy.”
Last summer it was a gun-and-bomb massacre in Norway that killed 77 people, many of them teens.
While multiple-victim public shootings are widely considered a uniquely American problem–that Wild West heritage of ours, you know, combined with our lax gun laws and that pesky Second Amendment–they’re actually not.
Think Columbine was the worst school shooting in history?
Think again. That actually occurred in Germany, a country with some of the strictest gun control laws in the world. In fact, the worst three school shootings in history all occurred in western Europe, in countries with way tighter gun restrictions than we’ve ever even dreamed of here:
- Gutenberg-Gymnasium, Erfurt, Germany, 2002: 18 dead;
- Dunblane Primary School, Dunblane, Scotland, 1996: 17 dead, including 16 kindergartners;
- Albertville-Realschule, Winnenden, Germany, 2009: 16 dead.
The Second Amendment doesn’t seem to be the problem.
Nor do lax gun laws. According to a study by economists John R. Lott, Jr. and William M. Landes, the only public policy factor that affects multiple victim public shootings is right-to-carry laws: They reduce both the number and severity of multiple victim public shootings.
Mass shooters are afraid of citizens with guns, and it appears that’s about the only thing they are afraid of.
In fact, Lott takes the argument one step further: It looks more like gun bans are the problem. Consider this: With one exception, every multiple-victim public shooting in the United States since the end of World War II has occurred in places where guns were banned.
Like the theater in Aurora, Colorado, which prohibited anyone but police from carrying guns.
And a lot of good allowing cops to carry guns did: They police didn’t get there till after the shooting had stopped. According to CBS, the attack began about 12:30. By the time the police arrived ten minutes later, James Holmes was out in the parking lot, according to Reuters, and the carnage was complete.
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In other news, Dark Knight Rises director Christopher Nolan issued a statement on the shooting. He says in part:
The movie theatre is my home, and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me.
You can read the whole thing at Moviefone.
Speaking of violating that innocent and hopeful place, here’s British movie critic Jenny McCartney’s July, 2008 review of Nolan’s Dark Knight, rated PG-13:
But the greatest surprise of all – even for me, after eight years spent working as a film critic – has been the sustained level of intensely sadistic brutality throughout the film.
I will attempt to confine my plot spoilers to the opening: the film begins with a heist carried out by men in sinister clown masks. As each clown completes a task, another shoots him point-blank in the head. The scene ends with a clown – The Joker – stuffing a bomb into a wounded bank employee’s mouth.
After the murderous clown heist, things slip downhill. A man’s face is filleted by a knife, and another’s is burned half off. A man’s eye is slammed into a pencil. A bomb can be seen crudely stitched inside another man’s stomach, which subsequently explodes. A trussed-up man is bound to a chair and set alight atop a pile of banknotes.
A plainly terrorised child is threatened at gunpoint by a man with a melted face. It is all intensely realistic. Oh but don’t worry, folks: there isn’t any nudity.
That movie, by the way, like The Dark Knight Rises, was rated PG-13: Some Material May Be Inappropriate for Children Under 13.
Ya think?
Christopher Nolan is just a story-teller and the Joker, just a villain in his story. Nolan isn’t a mass murderer, nor is he advocating mass murder. But research has repeatedly shown that exposure to movie and video violence desensitizes us to real world violence in both the short and long-term. And Nolan’s movies are certainly part of that.
If the savage violation of the theater’s innocence truly devastates him, Nolan needs go no further than his bathroom mirror to begin assigning blame.
While there are massacres from guns in other countries, the fact is there remains FAR more multiple blood-letting deaths in America from these weapons. From news sources comes a 62-page listing of the such killings from guns….and the list only starts in 2005.
http://www.bradycampaign.org/xshare/pdf/major-shootings.pdf
I do have a question for you. In light of your views on CC would you agree that at least cc should be denied to certain groups: persons on terrorist watch lists, sex offenders, stalkers, drug traffickers to minors, and assailants of police officers?
What’s your source for that, Gregory? The Brady Campaign’s list of multiple-victim shootings in the US is just that. It says nothing about the number of deaths in the US compared to the number of deaths in the rest of the world. Dr. John R. Lott, Jr. who has studied and written extensively on multiple-victim public shootings (MVPS)–see, eg., Multiple Victim Public Shootings, Bombings, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handgun Laws: Contrasting Private and Public Law Enforcement, says that, on a per capita basis, MVPS deaths run about the same in the U.S. and Europe.
I would agree that concealed carry could be denied to convicted felons.
If you read the report you will note that each gun related murder spree is sourced.
I hope, and trust, that in typing a fast response you did not leave out intentionally persons on terrorist watch lists, sex offenders, stalkers, drug traffickers to minors, and assailants of police officers as those who should be denied CC.
I also hope you are not trying to state that there are not far more murder sprees in the U.S. due to our guns than in places around Europe or Canada. That is not in any way an accurate statement to be trying to make. Instead it would reduce this to a most laughable post,.
I’m not asking your source for the shootings. I’m asking you your source for your assertion that:
We’ve been through this before, but I’ll say it again: You simply saying that something isn’t an accurate statement doesn’t actually make it an inaccurate statement. You have to provide reputable sources for your information.
As I said above, I have no problem with convicted felons being denied permission to carry concealed weapons. So if your people on terrorist watch lists (etc.) are convicted felons, then I have no problem with their being denied concealed carry. If they’re U.S. citizens and on a terrorist watch list because we’re afraid they might do something bad, that’s not a sufficient reason to deprive them of Second Amendment protection. Whether or not someone can be deprived of a constitutional right depends on their relationship to the Constitution, so you’re not giving me enough info to go on yet.
I am not here to argue about gun laws, but to comment on the movie.
The original creators of Batman comics probably never imagined the violent new interpretation presented in the “The Dark Knight Rises.”
With the opening scenes depicting a senseless shooting, I wonder if the movie patrons expected the story line to be what was portrayed.
I am just musing here because I read comics as a child and would expect exciting storylines, not violence.
Of course, Batman was never my genre of choice.
I’ll stick with “Little LuLu”.
I, on the other hand, J.O., am a Charter Member of the Batman and Robin Fan Club–and still have the over-sized full-color pin to prove it! While there was violence in my Batman comics, you’re right: This Batman has a whole different feel from the caped crusader I grew up with.
I think Gregory missed the point. The real point about gun laws is that they do nothing to stop this violence, and in fact may make it worse. New York City has some of the most stringent gun control laws in the country, and one of the highest gun violence rates in the country. Washington DC banned hand-gun ownership and required other guns to be disassembled and kept under lock and key. Eventually the Supreme Court struck the law as being unconstitutional. But at the time the law was in force, Washington DC had the highest per capita murder rate in the United States. Australia virtually banned gun ownership after a public shooting incident and gun violence immediately spiked.
The perpetrator of the shooting in Colorado supposedly acquired the weapons he used legally. But I can list incident after incident where the weapons used were acquired illegally. Columbine High School is the poster child for gun control, but the weapons used were acquired illegally.
I hate to disillusion anyone, but if a person plans to enter a theater or school and commit mass murder, do you really think they will be afraid to break the law to acquire a weapon?
The gun control debate is about fear, not facts. The issue is fear, not the number of people that die. According to the Journal of American Medicine, the third leading cause of death in the United States is physician error. In the year 2000, roughly 225,000 people died because of medical errors. In the same year, there were 12,600 gun related homicides. That’s eighteen times as many physician caused deaths. Should we ban doctors? We average three times as many traffic fatalities a year as gun fatalities. Should we ban cars?
So let’s stop debating our emotions and start looking at facts. I want to stop the tragedy of violence, too. But I don’t want to pass another ineffective law that makes the problem worse just so I can go home and feel good about myself. If we’re going to pass laws, especially laws that restrict our freedoms, I want them to actually work. And gun control laws don’t work.
Gergory, you say “While there are massacres from guns in other countries, the fact is there remains FAR more multiple blood-letting deaths in America from these weapons.” While there may be more MULTIPLE DEATH shootings in the U.S., the total gun related death count is much higher in other countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
I realize, however, that the U.S. data is not completely up to date.