Why aren't there more dynamite "tragedies?"

[sharesunited]

Because it is so much more difficult for fools to get their hands on dynamite.

[The Straight Story]

1. My uncle lost some fingers to that stuff when he was a kid, oh and to the OP

Plenty of people have had it over the years (farmers for example). Thing is, most people aren't idiots or jerks. The ones that are, well we should be banning them.

[sharesunited]

2. Sorry about your uncle.

Actually, my point is that guns are made for killing and are easy to get. Therefore, people are being killed with guns and not dynamite.

[The Straight Story]

3. People are being killed by others who have mental health issues

See my thread on Canada and Norway:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5395527

[imdjh]

4. Or it could be that dynamite is really hard to aim.

What is up with all this anti-gun BS? It's a wasteful political objective. It's nonsense. So why do people cling to it?

[rrneck]

5. This is easy to get.

I wonder how many and what kinds of deaths make a national tragedy in the public mind? If all the guns in the world went away tomorrow, would we have a national uproar over one or two people killed with knives? Hurting bunches of people is not all that hard for someone who really wants to. Poison in Tylenol, a little white power in an envelope, a single guy in a white van and a rifle picking off people one at a time.

Sweating the existence of guns is like generals fighting the last war.

[sharesunited]

6. You're understating the menace.

They are made for the purpose of killing and they make killing easy. So why does American society tolerate them so mindlessly and become numbed to the damage they are doing? Apparently because somebody thinks he's going to somehow go to war with the government and needs his guns?

[The Straight Story]

8. The question is

Why do those who kill others do so?

Guns are just a tool, as I have mentioned elsewhere my dad has owned one since he was a young kid and never used a gun to harm others. Millions of people here own them and don't use them to harm others.

The ones that do - well we need to better understand why and target them for help.

I don't own a gun now, I did at one time for work. Only pulled it once.

I think peoples' fears of guns is misdirected. Something I touched on here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5396974

[sharesunited]

9. And why did you need your gun for work?

Presumably because of the threat from guns in the population.

The power to easily kill is corrupting. And the human condition is fragile and filled with passion. Is "he seems troubled" the kind of standard you want for targeted intervention?

Too many disgruntled American males choosing guns to solve their problems. And it is only because guns are so accessible.

I'll check out your earlier post.

[The Straight Story]

11. Needed it to defend from myself, and not from guns

I was doing security for an abandoned apartment complex. Drug dealers, rapists, etc would hang out there. I didn't know or care if they had a gun, I saw people being there as dangerous - I wouldn't want to face a knife any more than I would a gun, nor would I want to face an unarmed addict hyped up on some drug or other.

Guns have an equalizing ability. It does not matter if you are trained in hand to hand combat (which I was), if you are physically strong or weak, they put you on equal footing with those who would harm you.

I walked into an unknown situation one day there. Heard a door slam shut while I was doing my rounds. No one was supposed to live there or be there. I was scared, no radio, no cell phone, just me. And I was worried there might be someone being harmed. But I had my gun and flashlight and went in - i could have went back to my post and called the police, but if someone was in danger time was of the essence.

I didn't think to myself, 'gosh they might have a gun', because you don't need a gun to hurt other people. I did think 'I have a gun, and I can defend myself and someone else if they are in harm's way'.

Turned out it was the wind pulling the door shut and open from a hole in the window :) But the week before I started a body was found there and someone shot at one of our guards.

[rrneck]

14. Judging by the news

coverage and the activity in this forum people are anything but numbed.

It seems to me that guns are personal. About a thousand years ago when I had a carry permit I did a bit of reading on the subject and the magic number at the time regarding firearms confrontations (with a handgun) was 21. Most handgun confrontations occur within about a seven yard range. Proficiency with a handgun required accuracy at around seven yards. Now think about how many hot button issues in this country today are concerned with activities within that seven yard radius. Sexual orientation, abortion, smoking, modes of dress, spoken language, hell even the environmental impact of the entire human race is defined in terms of a "footprint".

Yes, firearms in this country are a menace. They are a menace for anyone who finds themselves on the wrong end of one. The spread of carry permit legislation across the country, not to mention the Heller decision, seems to indicate that people are taking the menace pretty seriously. It seems to me that the one thing all the victims of these mass shooting had in common was that there was nobody there to help them. They knew it, and their attackers knew it. That's why they go down the way they do. Very few people who know anything about firearms have any delusions about saving the day in a gunfight with a lunatic. A gun, for the vast overwhelming majority of gun owners, represents a last ditch chance at survival.

Terrorizing people is not that difficult. All you have to do is threaten to get to them within that 21 foot radius. Run the economy of the entire planet off the rails? Fine. Raise the level of the oceans twenty feet? Whatever. Base your entire civilization on non renewable resources? Cool. Mail a letter full of confectioners sugar to somebody and the whole country goes apeshit. People are willing to tolerate all these guns because they know that when they really need help, the only person that will be there to help them is themselves.

[depakid]

15. Fact is- having or carrying a firearm increases your risk of harm-

and the isk of harm to other in your house or around you, which is yet another reason why gun proliferaion (even in what one might consider sensible hands) is a very pernicious thing.

[rrneck]

17. I don't really trust statistics. They are too easily

manipulated while they always carry the facade of accuracy. They can be helpful, but every time someone quotes some stats I find myself thinking about all the stuff that can't be measured statistically.

People are not entirely rational critters. Some of the irrational stuff they do can be magical. As for the other stuff, well, you know. A remote threat can be dealt with using large scale policy initiatives and measured statistically. Personal threats can be measured statistically, but they must be dealt with personally. And personal threats are what concern people most. Hence the enthusiasm for small arms.

I don't go at the problem in terms of my personal safety. I own guns, but for the last several years the only time I have touched them is to move them out of the way to reach something in the closet. I am lucky enough to live near (I can't afford to live in it) a very low crime community and I don't have to think about self defense too much. But I don't think I could look somebody in the eye and tell them that the politicians I vote for or the services funded by my tax dollars will not be there to help them when they really need it, and that they also cannot have the right to assume the responsibility for their own self defense. I just can't impose that sort of statistical crap shoot on them. Judging by the way things are going in this country, most people seem to agree.

Guns are damn dangerous, and their use frequently ends in tragedy. But I don't know of a better way to regulate firearms in this country, and I haven't heard one from anybody else either. It seems to me we need to work on the people side of the equation. If we could make better people, guns would be less of an issue. But only less, they will always be a problem.

[depakid]

19. Epidemiological studies don't lie and they're consistent

In terms of populations, those owning guns (and their families) suffer many times the number of tragedies as non-gunowners. This it doesn't make sense for the typical person to own one if their rationale is sefl defense or saftey. Obviously, that will vary from person to person- or occupation to occupation- or from time to time, given changing circumstances.

[rrneck]

25. I don't necessarily disagree.

All politics is local.
Tip O'Neill

Stats tell us that somebody will experience an event within a given population and a given time frame. But they don't tell us who. That's why it's hard to convince people with them. If we don't know who, we have to deal with the entire population to address any changes we need to make. We can, and have, regulated firearms a good bit. They are regulated almost to the point of personal intrusiveness in an effort to control the technology. That genie is already out of the bottle and he's not going back.

But what have we done in this country to take care of our people? Not much. We have turned them into shopoholic automatons. If we, by some miracle, were to get the guns out of the hands of the all the unstable people, we would still have a shit load of unstable people running around loose. The abusive husband might not shoot his estranged wife, but he would still abuse her nonetheless. The young man that may kick in a door and shoot everybody inside the house may lose his gun, but he would still terrorize everyone around him. The parent that would leave a firearm where a child could get to it would still be a bad parent.

You're right, the chances will vary from person to person, time to time, and from circumstances to circumstances. In the financial world that's called pushing risk down the economic ladder. Very few people have reason to fear in an affluent neighborhood. Restrictions on people's civil rights always fall heaviest on the poor. I would rather see them empowered than controlled. If we were to actually help people, we'd get more bang for our societal (and political) buck.

Put yourself at the funeral of an individual who died in a violent personal assault with a firearm. Can you really see yourself telling that person's grieving family that statistically speaking, not having a gun was the prudent thing to do? You'd sound just like the pointy headed elitist liberal caricature that has been the whipping boy for the Republican party for the last half century. Now put yourself at the graduation ceremony of the person that might have shot them but instead went to college. Wouldn't you like to take political credit for that? We don't have unlimited resources, lets expend them enriching people, not reducing civil rights.

damn typos

[X_Digger]

27. Hrmm, not sure of the correlation / causation..

Are folks who generally feel the need to arm themselves already in a situation where they have a better chance of being the victim of violent crime? If so, I would assume correlation, not causation between the two.

There's also a truism / tautology in there- if all guns were removed from a place, obviously there would be no gun violence.

[depakid]

29. Except that's taken into account through statistical controls

The way it works is that someone in the household ends up committing the crime, being involved in the accident or suicide.

And the chances of that occurrring is far greater than ever using the firearm for self defense against an intruder.

So, ironically- in succembing to fear of a rare "scary event" -the person renders themselves and others to a much less rare- though equally (if not more) lethal form of harm.

[Winterblues]

28. would we have a national uproar over one or two people killed with knives?

One or two no but if we had deaths in the thousands as we do with guns then maybe there would be an uproar.

[benEzra]

30. Umm, FOUR TIMES as many people are murdered with knives as with all rifles combined.

http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2007/data/table_20.html

Knife murders in 2007: 1,796
Rifle murders in 2007: 450 (all rifles combined)

The MSM scaremongering about rifle crime is a means to an end, i.e. the banning of the most popular rifles in the United States. But far more people are murdered with knives than with any type of rifle, including so-called "assault weapons."

[1]

7. it is not difficult to get your hands on dynamite...

its sort of the same logic that wonders why americans don't do the "general strike" like in france...

americans don't particularly mind unloading a clip or two into someone's ass. (i could say culture, movies or video games, but that would raise more arguments and threads, right?)

americans generally view blowing shit up as cowardly (yeah, yeah, and for all of you timothy mcveigh freaks out there... the overwhelming majority of americans viewed him as a coward. you did too, right?)

that's pretty much it...

[Arctic Dave]

10. Explosives tragedies were fairly common. Read any book about Alfred Nobel

The reason you don't see them anymore is because restriction for purchase and training for handlers.

[sharesunited]

12. Thanks Dave! Exactly! Restrictions on purchase.

Makes all the difference to public safety.

[1]

13. in the 1800's. what is your point? oh! trying to make this a "gun control" thread. HA! fail!

you were so amusing, however...

trying to relate totally uncontrolled dynamite purchases in the 1800's as somehow equivalent to totally controlled automatic weapons purchases from 1934 on...

you are amazing... you don't know the laws of this great country, you prefer to spout the "what some here choose to believe" lies about those laws... to advance your agenda... in hopes of getting others to pass off what you know to be lies as truth.


in this act you are disgusting...

[wickerwoman]

16. Dynamite was a Klan favorite in the 50s and 60s.

There's an area in Birmingham called Dynamite Hill because the Klan bombed so many churches and houses there.

Most of the people flaming out these days plan to take themselves out as well as their victims and I guess they figure a gun gives them more control over when and is less likely to just leave them critically injured and then having to face justice.

C4 is harder to get one's hands on than a gun and that's contributed to plenty of tragedies in Northern Ireland and the Middle East.

[thelordofhell]

18. The last Dynamite tragedy I remember

Is when Kip and Napolean tried to learn Rex-Kwan-Do.

[Uben]

20. As StraightStory mentioned......

....guns are tools, as are knives,dynamite, cars, airplanes, swords, etc. All were invented to benefit mankind, all are have been used to kill people. Yes, the advent of guns facilitated wars, but before guns, people were being bludgeoned by knives, arrows, swords axes and spears. Ownership of guns facilitated the acquisition of food. They became a necessary tool for pioneers who wanted to survive the wildernesses.

Those who are against gun ownership are all to often the same ones who are against putting those who use guns for killing people to death for their crimes. You should concentrate your efforts on controlling those who use tools to kill people rather than trying to eliminate the tools they use. It's like trying to eliminate cars to control traffic deaths. Ridiculous, when you think about it.

People have differing opinions, and I respect the right of those opposed to gun ownership to do so. But, in my opinion, they are wrong, and their opposition to ownership is unfounded. Flame away if you like, you won't win, and you won't change any gun owner's minds. We've been going at this for a long time. The reason there is not more gun control is because that is the way the "people" want it. You have been "overruled", so to speak, and complaining about it on this board isn't going to change a thing!

[Smith_3]

21. Dynamite is not a good choice for close range combat.

[jmowreader]

22. Go here

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/mining/statistics/discoal.htm

It doesn't break out dynamite tragedies from non-dynamite tragedies, though.

[alarimer]

23. Yes there are way too many damn guns in this country.

I see gun apologists have already gotten to this thread. How many people have to die just so they can own guns? 100? 1000? Gun nuts are simply paranoid lunatics and they ALL have the potential to be dangerous. I stay away from anyone who owns guns. Period.

You hear nothing about mass stabbings. They might get one or two but that's about it.

[-..__...]

24. Who needs dynamite...

when this will do...

http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templates/links/link.jsp?id=0003177215851a&type=product&cmCat=froogle&cm_ven=data_feed&cm_cat=froogle&cm_pla=0370204&cm_ite=0003177215851a

and there's no background check required or forms/paper work to fill out.

And yet there hasn't been a rash of pipe bomb "tragedies".

[slackmaster]

26. Yes, it is about as regulated as real AK-47s and other machineguns

Because those things are inherently dangerous.

:hi: