Thread: Yet another shooting incident in the states

This from the NZ Herald website

Gunmen opened fire on dozens of people marching in a Mother's Day second-line parade in New Orleans on Sunday, wounding at least 17 people, police said. Police spokeswoman Remi Braden said in an email that many of the 17 victims were grazed and most of the wounds weren't life-threatening. No deaths were reported.

Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas told reporters that a 10-year-old girl was grazed in the shooting around 2pm. She was in good condition. He said three or four people were in surgery, but he didn't have their conditions. Officers were interspersed with the marchers, which is routine for such events. As many as 400 people joined in the procession that stretched for about three blocks, though only half that many were in the immediate vicinity of the shooting, Serpas said.

Police saw three suspects running from the scene in the city's 7th Ward neighbourhood. No arrests had been made as of late afternoon. Second-line parades are loose processions in which people dance down the street, often following behind a brass band. They can be impromptu or planned and are sometimes described as moving block parties.

A social club called The Original Big 7 organized Sunday's event. The group was founded in 1996 at the Saint Bernard housing projects, according to its MySpace page. The neighborhood where the shooting happened was a mix of low-income and middle-class row houses, some boarded up. As of last year, the neighbourhood's population was about 60 percent of its pre-Hurricane Katrina level.

Police vowed to make swift arrests.

"We'll get them. We have good resources in this neighbourhood," Serpas said

they definitely did the right thing in knocking back recent gun law amendments. The most ridiculous thing is that the NRA will use this incident to promote even higher gun ownership

Originally Posted by Bavarian_Hunter

they definitely did the right thing in knocking back recent gun law amendments. The most ridiculous thing is that the NRA will use this incident to promote even higher gun ownership

NRA will probably argue now for armed guards for parades

the only thing stopping a bad guy at a parade is a good guy armed

Also keep an eye on this page here, it lists gun deaths in the USA since Sandy Hook shootings. Overall it makes for pretty horrific and sad reading. 3,695 since Dec 14 2012.

I'm thankful that no one was injured. Still, it is alarming. I hope it will serve as a kick with a spur in tightening up the gun laws over there.

Originally Posted by phillipgr

injured

You mean killed? ha

Originally Posted by Bavarian_Hunter

You mean killed? ha

Hah whoops. The forum muppet strikes yet again!

What new law would have stopped this shooting?

There are multi millions of guns in the US currently and many of those millions are in the hands of criminals. Criminals are criminals for the simple reason that they ignore and break current laws. I doubt that adding a few more laws will stop criminals from committing crime.

Why do some people want to harm or kill others? That's what the powers at be need to focus on.

The issue with the last laws were they restricted the law abiding without disarming the criminal. For a law to work then it must target those causing the crime and not the law abiding. Enforcing current laws may be a good starting point.

Cheers.

Originally Posted by Littledog

What new law would have stopped this shooting?

There are multi millions of guns in the US currently and many of those millions are in the hands of criminals. Criminals are criminals for the simple reason that they ignore and break current laws. I doubt that adding a few more laws will stop criminals from committing crime.

Why do some people want to harm or kill others? That's what the powers at be need to focus on.

The issue with the last laws were they restricted the law abiding without disarming the criminal. For a law to work then it must target those causing the crime and not the law abiding. Enforcing current laws may be a good starting point.

Cheers.

All they basically wanted to do was introduce background checks on people before they were just allowed to buy any gun they wanted to. Granted it wouldnt stop everyone, but if those laws stopped one person from getting one gun and in turn saved one life arent they justified and fully worth it?

When you're in the States or Canada for any amount of time and read the newspapers daily, there are ALOT of shootings that occur regularly. We only hear about a fraction of them.

Originally Posted by JoshC

When you're in the States or Canada for any amount of time and read the newspapers daily, there are ALOT of shootings that occur regularly. We only hear about a fraction of them.

It cant be justified in my opinion, their gun laws I mean.

No its actually 1.something - and you should have said "statistically less than 2"...

If you understood anything about probability you might be able to draw some conclusions about an almost 50% drop in serious gun crime over 20 years. If you bothered to check the sources of the information, you might find out they are reputable. And clearly your opinions seem to be based on popular media.... I think that I would rather use statistics.

You are obviously unaware that much of the states has cool off periods, vetting and checking and waiting periods before people can acquire guns. But don't let me stop you from recycling popular opinion...

You also fail to understand that criminals don't bother with these sort of proceedures... So how many people are you going to save by making more rules - give me some statistics.... had enough of the opinion.

Originally Posted by Sidney

No its actually 1.something - and you should have said "statistically less than 2"...

If you understood anything about probability you might be able to draw some conclusions about an almost 50% drop in serious gun crime over 20 years. If you bothered to check the sources of the information, you might find out they are reputable. And clearly your opinions seem to be based on popular media.... I think that I would rather use statistics.

You are obviously unaware that much of the states has cool off periods, vetting and checking and waiting periods before people can acquire guns. But don't let me stop you from recycling popular opinion...

You also fail to understand that criminals don't bother with these sort of proceedures... So how many people are you going to save by making more rules - give me some statistics.... had enough of the opinion.

The irony of that is that I got a distinction in the statistics and mathematical probability topic I did at uni. I never said the report was wrong, I simply stated that I am hesitant in believing statistics that are thrown at me because I have seen how they can be easily manipulated. I also don't recall saying that gun ownership or the increase of it will necessarily increase gun crime - that would be a bold statement. When you don't put basic control measures of who can own a semi automatic military weapon though I do believe you are playing with fire. The issue with gun crime is that a higher proportion of people involved in gun crime are fatally wounded in comparison to other weapons.

And yes gun crime may have decreased over the past few years but so has every other type of violent crime leading to murder. It just means that you have less of a chance to die in general; you still have a proportionately similar chance to die from a gun now than you did in 1993.

There are a lot of questions you can ask about statistics and for me the most blatant one is why did they choose 1993 as the benchmark to compare today’s violence?
I haven't looked it up but I'd be fairly confident you will find that it was the highest peak in US gun crime and anything deviating down from that will give you a much higher perceived percentage drop. It does look impressive I agree, I myself have seen it first hand at uni when we were "fortunate enough" to have a lecture from one of Australia's top "Climate Change Experts". He showed us this damning graph with a huge percentage decrease in rainfall for Australia from 1970 to 2011 which conclusively proved the effects were so disastrous already that more money had to be invested into climate change research and this and that. He then went on quoting that high percentage increase to talk about global warming over the past 100 years. Why 1970s? And why to 2011 when talking about a century of change, why not start your graph from a century ago?
1970s in Australia is the wettest recorded decade over the past 110 years included in his argument. He then linked this to the most recent decade which was the driest, thus giving a exasperated percentage which in no way represented the real difference over the past century – which was around a quarter of the percentage he gave. It may pay to note that I believe in global warming and advocate strongly that we address it, just with genuine fact not twisted stats.
My point is that despite the fact that you believe I am a follower of mainstream media (which I take offense to), I, apparently unlike yourself do not readily accept things that are put in front of me just because they suit my ideals. I also feel compelled to question why because through my naivety of the past have learnt it is dangerous not to do so. It may surprise some that people from politicians to climate change experts and even the humble FBI have their own agendas and will make sure that their best interests are kept in check.
Personally if I were Robert Mueller I too would feel compelled to show a report or some statistics to justify my $8.1 billion annual budget (from 2012).
Lastly for you to attempt to correct my informal syntax on a forum like this is a clear indication that you are trying very hard to assert your intellectual dominance over me; I won’t fight you for it, I just wanted to give my opinion.
Cheers,
BH

The facts of the matter are that unless we can stop the criminally minded from wanting to harm and kill and also stop those with serious mental disorders from wanting to be like action movie villians we are still going to see gun deaths, knife deaths, cooking pot deaths etc etc.
Adding new laws to the equation will not stop the killings. Its easy to find a clean buyer!

I am dismayed at the democrats for pushing the semi auto ban and magazine ban in with the background check bill as on its own it may have been passed by the senate. The powers at be knew that the AWB and Mag ban bill would be lost but they pushed the background check bill thru with it anyway. It was just bollocks politics so a president could get up on stage and frown alot!

Tackle the crime and the mental health issue and we are on the right path to safer communities. So many of the shooters involved in mass shootings in the US are on psychiatric medicines and a disproportional number of gun murders are from gang and criminal groups.
The gang members currently pay clean associates to purchase for them. Introduce new laws and they will still continue to do the same.

Cheers.

Don't get me wrong its unacceptable, any of it.. but the americans have a system.. a dramatic change to the system will have catastrophic effects... the law abiding will comply, those that don't are by definition not law abiding... more guns in a criminal world, with less fear of the law abiding. Moving from the cold war mentality of deterence by equal or greater force in the american psyche would take some radical change in direction..

I don't like it, I wouldn't want what they have... but I don't do trite either

Originally Posted by Sidney

Don't get me wrong its unacceptable, any of it.. but the americans have a system.. a dramatic change to the system will have catastrophic effects... the law abiding will comply, those that don't are by definition not law abiding... more guns in a criminal world, with less fear of the law abiding. Moving from the cold war mentality of deterence by equal or greater force in the american psyche would take some radical change in direction..

I don't like it, I wouldn't want what they have... but I don't do trite either

Yup, it would take a monumental shift in American culture to move away from the answer of violence. Personally I don't think they ever can, it's too deep in their psyche. Their obsession with the word 'freedom' borders on the insane

What we have here in NZ isn't perfect, but it's pretty good.