NIU shooting
5 dead (6 including the gunman)
4th school shooting in a week

i read today about a 10 year old kid in the past week or so that shot his sister in the face with a shotgun because she took the potato chips he wanted

what the fuck is going on in this country?

you guys and gals abroad - do you ever see anything like this in your respective nations?

this kind of thing just makes me sick...friggin' cowards shooting at innocents...for nothing...loser.

If...

Why

Ten years ago, Columbine shocked me. Since then, I've become numb to stuff like this.

I'm just glad I'm no longer in school.
I'd be scared to go.

YAY GUNS GOD BLESS 'MERICA YEEEEEHAW PASS ME A BEER

How does a ten year old hold on to a shotgun kick and know how to use it in the first place. The parents should be in jail for that one, they obviously trained him to use it and gave him access to it.

double post

This is an American thing. Even in certain middle-eastern countries where every household has an AK47, this shit still doesn't happen.

People's basic needs are overwhelmingly ignored on a daily basis in this country, so you can probably expect it to just get worse. Desperation makes people do extreme things...add mental health issues and you have a ticking time bomb. Millions of people with mental heath problems are ignored due to our pathetic system and lack of heath care. It makes perfect sense to me.

After a the famous port Arthur massacre here in Tasmania the AU Gov outlawed most semi automatic and definitely automatic weapons.

We rarely ever have shootings, certainly not at schools.

If you believe all you read in the newspapers we're in the middle of a booze-filled knife attack culture

that being said, I won't go across the street from where I live to the shops at night. Two incidents last month, one chap was stabbed, and another was beaten with a metal bar for asking some teenagers to stop spitting on the floor.

where are you parka? when i was in dalston there was a dude stabbed across the road, also someone killed locally for asking kids in the common room of an estate to turn down the music at like 2 or 3 in the morning when he had to get up at 6 to drive. pretty stink

also i work in angel, where those two kids were stabbed in broad daylight

don't get me started on guns in america...

I'm in Stoke Newington and there's been 3 gang murders near my flat since December and a drive by last spring... oh and a copper was stabbed in the leg over the summer.
That was a real pain, cuz every cop car in north london descended upon Church St with sirens screaming and choppers hovering low for about 2 hours.
I was trying to sleep

I still think it's a nice place and relatively safe, as long as you don't go where you shouldn't, but that's the case with most places I guess.

Angel and Stokey are weird cuz they have a false sense of gentrification, when in reality, just off the high streets, it's still pretty rough.

haha i live in stoke now on church street. I heard it can be pretty rough but yeah like you say, just don't go where it doesn't look right! There's some rough looking places around clissold leisure centre, heh.

i love SN though!

The UK is the only place I've ever seen pint glass attacks

I guess with the proportionally smaller amount of guns they have to get a bit more creative with their violent attacks. Knife attacks are a completely different beast - you have to get right up in someone's face, unlike the cowardice involved with firearm attacks.

Gang/hoodlum violence is one thing, but I think this thread was directed more towards the major freak-outs that have been happening in the USA that are directed towards random people in public places by seemingly "normal" people (well, what I mean is normally non-violent folks that snap and go postal). Most of these attacks are commited by people that need psychological help that have slipped through the system...

i know this is going slightly off topic but...

re: dudes in england/replies. i grew up in england and lived there till i was 8, then moved here. went back for the first time since i left just after the terrorist attacks there. i was walking around london waiting to meet up with my grandma when some cop and his partner with a machine gun walked up to me. they wanted to talk to me because they suspected i had 'gang affiliations in the area' or something. after about twenty seconds and them hearing my australian accent i think they thought the had the wrong person haha.

ps those 'stab vests' or whatever they now wear are cool, i don't know why australian police don't have them.

The US seems to have alot of internal problems that don't get dealt with, I would imagine that what you end up with is a mass of seriously detached children with no real prospect of a future, aside from obesity and flipping burgers.
As the safety of their childhood home starts to fade, the reality that they will actually grow up and have to leave (either high school or college) that must really freak some of them out...

I couldn't pretend to understand it, but it is something that needs to be dealt with and legislation isn't the answer, regardless of whst side of the amendments you stand on, I don't think it's a legal issue, it is a social ill, and only a social approach will help it.

Slightly related - Idiocracy by Mike Judge is a scathing commentary on the US.


(soda pop SMASH we could meet at the Defoe and compare vinyl)

People are nuts everywhere. Maybe they don't use just guns (we mainly do) but they'll find a way to kill someone over something stupid.

It's not just an American thing, there's tons and tons of insane stories from around the world on school attacks and other types. I just googled up a few out of interest, it's really sad.



Also, it's usually NOT trashy/southern/USA -pride-type stereotypes like this doing it. It's self proclaimed "nerds" and "outsiders" who feel superior and inferior at the same time. Just commenting on the post, nothing actually directed AT you banshee.

yo sounds good although i'm a bit sceptical about taking my vinyl anywhere, won't we get funny looks? heh. Okay maybe just a smogun or two

Even if you think this doesn't happen in in certain Middle Eastern countries, there are many places throughout Africa and Asia where soldiers who are barely old enough to hold the rifles are out there killing and being killed every day.

I think if there is a uniquely American aspect of this phenomenon, it's the reflexive urge to blame others for one's problems and the need to act out on them. The gun just makes it much easier to do this.

Sounds like you need a gun.

I think that the children armies and militias of Africa and Asia are an entirely different thing all together. These are not troubled children picking up arms, they are usually forced into it. While they might be shooting up their school, it tends to be under the influence of some warlord (not to be confused with some online gaming warlord) or other figure of abusive power.

It does happen in other parts of the western world, but certainly not with the frequency that it does in the US. Maybe that is down to size and what not, but even if you include all the countries in Europe as one big bundle, and compare those shooting to the US's, I think you'll find that it is still an American phenomenon. And to use your words against you, not acknowledging that, is a reflexive urge to deflect your problems and place them elsewhere.

it very much isnt a USA problem, its people as a whole...were animals, we snap the same way things in nature snap, you think if a lion could hold a gun he wouldnt slaughter the lions that had more food, a bigger herum, more territory, etc...

sure were the "highest" life form but doesnt all logic lead to what goes up comes down, people have reached our max for the earth to mantian were all fucking loopy and like any other animal that over grows its nitch our numbers will shrink...

it isnt a gun problem either, take away guns thigs will slow down then people will get the gaul to use knives take the knives away, well have a club problem, then a rock problem, if people were alone in a void wed still end up pounding each other in with bare fist and tooth...

moral of the story i keep where im comfortable never leave home without ATLEAST one knife and make sure take care of those i need to protect, same as youd have to do in nature... were still just apes wearing costumes...