Why don't the Swiss have school shootings?

[Skyrad 0]

They don't have guns in schools and have more assault weapons than you can shake a stick at (Proper ones too) so why don't the Swiss have these mass school shootings? Me thinks culture.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[kallend 1,618]

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They don't have guns in schools and have more assault weapons than you can shake a stick at (Proper ones too) so why don't the Swiss have these mass shootings? Me thinks culture.

Better mental health care.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[Skyrad 0]

Certainly I believe that plays a part but I don't think its the only answer.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[rehmwa 2]

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Me thinks culture.

methinks I agree

I wonder if the fact of it being an armed populace is also a factor - even a small part. When it's part of the culture, perhaps the object is taken more seriously. Also, when everyone knows how to use one, the children are exposed to it in a responsible manner. Also, when everyone has one and knows how to use one, it's not an item of fear, terror, or romance - it's just a common item. etc etc

as a youth, I pretty much grew up in this environ - so I'm not just hip shooting...when I see people super fearful of a gun, it really does make as much sense to me as being afraid of a baseball bat (i.e., it's not the bat that scares, it's the attitude of the guy holding the bat that matters only)

If someone wants to argue this position, I'll be happy to switch around to the other. But I'm more comfy with this one.

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Skyrad 0]

I think you are correct, however I also think its the fact that all those assault rifles are held by trained soldiers reservists who require periodical update training. If someone were unstable they'd soon be relinquished of their long.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[rehmwa 2]

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I also think its the fact that all those assault rifles are held by trained soldiers reservists who require periodical update training.

question on any observation at this point is correlation vs cause vs effect.....but you pretty much come to the point of responsible ownership requires training and periodic reassessments

seems that would be something the NRA could offer that would be constructive

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[GeorgiaDon 340]

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I also think its the fact that all those assault rifles are held by trained soldiers reservists who require periodical update training.

question on any observation at this point is correlation vs cause vs effect.....but you pretty much come to the point of responsible ownership requires training and periodic reassessments

seems that would be something the NRA could offer that would be constructive

What a refreshingly constructive concept. I couldn't agree more.

However, when I suggested this, a long time ago in a thread far far away, I was totally flamed for suggesting that law-abiding gun owners should have to answer to anyone to prove their competence. Nothing in the 2nd amendment about "training" and "assessments", just "shall not be infringed", you know.

There is also the difficult issue of due process: suppose someone does go through an NRA-taught firearm safety class, and the instructors are concerned that the student is dangerous for whatever reason. What would be a lawful process by which that student could be restricted from accessing firearms? Unlike AFF, where an especially unpromising student can be given the bowling speech, one would (and should) have to go through the courts to take away someone's constitutionally guaranteed access to arms. People who instruct the courses would have to be trained to recognize "red flags", and have some power to initiate the judicial process.

Nevertheless, if this problem can be solved, I think "training and periodic reassessments", coupled with good background checks for all gun purchases (even private sales) and enforceable penalties for circumventing the checks, would help enormously. No doubt those who are intent on causing mayhem, and are deranged enough that they can't hide their intent for long enough to get through the class, will just try to acquire guns through some other means, which is why rigorous background checks and completion of the training before being able to purchase firearms, would be necessary for the system to make much of an impact.

The question is, can any of that be done in a manner that doesn't infringe to an impermissible extent on constitutional rights?

Don

_____________________________________
Tolerance is the cost we must pay for our adventure in liberty. (Dworkin, 1996)
“Education is not filling a bucket, but lighting a fire.” (Yeats)

[Skyrad 0]

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I also think its the fact that all those assault rifles are held by trained soldiers reservists who require periodical update training.

question on any observation at this point is correlation vs cause vs effect.....but you pretty much come to the point of responsible ownership requires training and periodic reassessments

seems that would be something the NRA could offer that would be constructive

Totally agree

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[kawisixer01 0]

Are you serious? Do some friggin research and quit being uneducated knee jerkers.The NRA runs the most accredited and complete training programs in the world. Many for free to those willing and wanting. Everything from law enforcement agencies to military groups partake in NRA training. Many agencies adopt NRA standards for their own training and have training officers who are also NRA accredited trainers. The NRA is the only group in this nation offering gun training tailored to youngsters, including training that teaches them what to do if a fellow youngster produces a firearm to play with unsafely without adult guidance. Much of the money from members is used to enrich, develop, and give training in safe use of firearms. You all could read pleanty of information on NRA sponsored training if you actually went to their site instead of making assumptions. A majority of the mailings I get from the NRA are training related and them pushing their members to be more and more trained in safety and use. Just because they rightfully don't believe in forced training doesn't mean they don't support and expect every gun owner to get it.

[ryoder 1,380]

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I also think its the fact that all those assault rifles are held by trained soldiers reservists who require periodical update training.

question on any observation at this point is correlation vs cause vs effect.....but you pretty much come to the point of responsible ownership requires training and periodic reassessments

seems that would be something the NRA could offer that would be constructive

Like this? http://training.nra.org/

The Personal Protection, and Basic Pistol courses are recognized by the state of CO as meeting instructional requirements for a CCW.

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[rehmwa 2]

that was going to be the next point - thanks

a bit disappointed here the NRA didn't just emphasize this in the latest speech

I'd like to see school districts voluntarily take advantage of this. It would take a maturation in the attitudes of regular people about guns - that means people need to stop being scared of the object and realize it's just a tool to be used responsibly

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[d123 1]

http://www.nationmaster.com/compare/Switzerland/United-States/Crime

More drugs
More suicides
Less prisoners

Lock, Dock and Two Smoking Barrelrolls!

[skypuppy 1]

there wasa discussion on tvo's the agenda program about this latest incident, and on of the mental health experts mentioned a paper that concluded some mental health issues such as paranoia tended to be weeded out in inclusive socialist-style cultures that downplays individualism and encourages statism, where they tend to be exagerated in a culture such as the us which emphasizes individualism and downplays statism...

It was an interesting discussion if somewhat confused because of the vagueness of the latest incident at the time as pertaining to mental health of the shooter....

Don't know if there's video online, but the show airs on tvo.org

If some old guy can do it then obviously it can't be very extreme. Otherwise he'd already be dead.
Bruce McConkey 'I thought we were gonna die, and I couldn't think of anyone

[Skyrad 0]

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Are you serious? Do some friggin research and quit being uneducated knee jerkers.

As a former soldier and someone who continues to shoot up to three times a week I'd say I was pretty well educated in the subject and definitely not a knee jerker. Your half cocked post however seems to put you firmly in that category.

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The NRA runs the most accredited and complete training programs in the world. Many for free to those willing and wanting.

The point is its not mandatory those who are irresponsible and unbalanced are not exactly likely to attend. Untrained youngster should not have access to firearms unsupervised.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[kallend 1,618]

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Are you serious? Do some friggin research and quit being uneducated knee jerkers.The NRA runs the most accredited and complete training programs in the world. Many for free to those willing and wanting. Everything from law enforcement agencies to military groups partake in NRA training. Many agencies adopt NRA standards for their own training and have training officers who are also NRA accredited trainers. The NRA is the only group in this nation offering gun training tailored to youngsters, including training that teaches them what to do if a fellow youngster produces a firearm to play with unsafely without adult guidance. Much of the money from members is used to enrich, develop, and give training in safe use of firearms. You all could read pleanty of information on NRA sponsored training if you actually went to their site instead of making assumptions. A majority of the mailings I get from the NRA are training related and them pushing their members to be more and more trained in safety and use. Just because they rightfully don't believe in forced training doesn't mean they don't support and expect every gun owner to get it.

Good for the NRA, doing what they should be doing. However, the issue is UNTRAINED people who don't know what they're doing but think they are Rambo because they have a military style gun.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[sfzombie 3]

i am all about personal freedoms and not restricting any of them. i agree with you in this case however. if you want to drive a car, you get a license, pass a test for it. there are situations where you can lose the right to own a gun. what would be the harm in having to go to a range every 5 years to get a recertification? i would gladly support that, even pay $25 for it. and a thorough mental health questionairre would be a good idea as well, just as a prescreen. if you fail, you need to get checked off by a live doctor. not perfect, but a start

http://kitswv.com

[popsjumper 2]

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They don't have guns in schools and have more assault weapons than you can shake a stick at (Proper ones too) so why don't the Swiss have these mass school shootings? Me thinks culture.

Because the Swiss have common sense. 'Mericans think, "Only MY sense makes sense."

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[nigel99 143]

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They don't have guns in schools and have more assault weapons than you can shake a stick at (Proper ones too) so why don't the Swiss have these mass school shootings? Me thinks culture.

Because the Swiss have common sense. 'Mericans think, "Only MY sense makes sense."

Nope, it is cause the swiss get as much boobies as they like. I swear violence is correlated to how prudish a society is.

Experienced jumper - someone who has made mistakes more often than I have and lived.

[sfzombie 3]

wow, what a concept! you may have something there. repressing certain things has been known to cause all sorts of problems. i wonder if anyone has any stats on the correlations. i once researched and wrote a paper on how the implementation of technology led to the degradation of the spirit of americans. if i had time, i would love to tackle this new angle. on the surface, it would appear to be an idea of correlation, but it could be closer to a causation.

http://kitswv.com

[Skyrad 0]

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They don't have guns in schools and have more assault weapons than you can shake a stick at (Proper ones too) so why don't the Swiss have these mass school shootings? Me thinks culture.

Because the Swiss have common sense. 'Mericans think, "Only MY sense makes sense."

Nope, it is cause the swiss get as much boobies as they like. I swear violence is correlated to how prudish a society is.

You could be on to something there mate.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

[Gravitymaster 0]

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They don't have guns in schools and have more assault weapons than you can shake a stick at (Proper ones too) so why don't the Swiss have these mass school shootings? Me thinks culture.

Because the Swiss have common sense. 'Mericans think, "Only MY sense makes sense."

Nope, it is cause the swiss get as much boobies as they like. I swear violence is correlated to how prudish a society is.

You could be on to something there mate.

You guys are getting very close to blaming this on women. The libs will start accusing you of fostering a "War on Women" if you aren't careful.

[piisfish 135]

you need to watch the movie Idiocracy, it already started in Merikka

scissors beat paper, paper beat rock, rock beat wingsuit - KarlM

[LyraM45 0]

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you need to watch the movie Idiocracy, it already started in Merikka

I have been saying this for a few years. We are definitely on our way there! Love that movie!

Apologies for the spelling (and grammar).... I got a B.S, not a B.A. :)

[SStewart 13]

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They don't have guns in schools and have more assault weapons than you can shake a stick at (Proper ones too) so why don't the Swiss have these mass school shootings? Me thinks culture.

Apples and Swiss army pocket knives.

Why is there no gun violence in Japan? They have virtually no gun crime at all. No mass murders, no school shootings, no gun crime to speak of really. Nobody in Japan has a gun.

Culture? maybe, the people in Japan have honor.

The United States disarmed the entire Japaneese population and their military after we won the war, it seems to be working.

When people act like children maybe the adults should step in. Eh?

Onward and Upward!

[Gravitymaster 0]

Killing Spree in Japan
Reuters 06.08.01
IKEDA, Japan -- Eight children were killed and 15 people injured in Japan's worst school tragedy on Friday when a middle-aged man with a history of mental illness went on a stabbing rampage at an elementary school in western Japan.

The injured were mostly seven and eight year-old students at the school in Ikeda, a suburb of the western city of Osaka. Seven of those killed were girls and one was a six-year-old boy, Japanese media said.

Two teachers were also injured, police said, including one 28-year-old man who was in critical condition and underwent emergency surgery after the attack, considered unprecedented in traditionally safe Japan. Five children were also in critical condition, television reports said.

The tragedy began when the man, wielding a 28-cm (11 inch) knife, walked into a classroom in mid-morning and began to stab children in a rampage that media said lasted a little over 10 minutes.

"He came in holding a knife and started stabbing," a first grade girl said.

One sixth-grade girl told Reuters: "We were listening to an announcement over the loudspeaker, and then it was broken into by a scream and a noise like a desk falling down,"

"Then I heard someone scream from below, 'Run!"'

Several children ran into a nearby supermarket yelling and crying for help, witnesses said.

"One of the boys, whose back was stained with red blood, fell in front of the cashier. He was pale and did not speak a word," a shop clerk told a television reporter.

Said one schoolboy: "I saw a person who had fallen down. I also saw blood."

Police were holding in custody a 37-year-old man who they said had previously undergone treatment for schizophrenia. "We have arrested a suspect," said a local police spokesman.

It was the worst mass-killing in Japan since the 1995 fatal sarin gas attack on crowded Tokyo subways by the Aum Shinrikyo (Aum Supreme Truth) cult which left 12 dead and thousands ill.

The motive behind the incident was unclear, but NHK public broadcaster said that the suspect had told police he had taken 10 times the usual dosage of tranquilizers and was babbling.

While school shootings, such the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, have become a grim part of life in the United States, random tragedy on such a scale is unheard of at Japanese schools.

The quiet of the summer day around the school, located in an ordinary residential area, was shattered by wailing sirens and the clatter of helicopters.

Ambulances lined the school driveway while students streamed out of the building and gathered on the school playing fields.

Frantic parents arrived at the school soon after, talking urgently into mobile phones. They later left with their children, tight-lipped.

The suspect, whom police asked not to name because of his history of mental illness, told police he wanted to suffer the death penalty for his crime.

"I was fed up with everything," police quoted him as saying, adding that he had previously attempted to commit suicide.

"I want to be put to death."

Media said that the suspect had previously been arrested for allegedly putting tranquilizers in tea which he gave to teachers at a school where he was employed, but was not brought to trial because he was under treatment for mental illness.

The government launched an emergency task force headed by Education Minister Atsuko Toyama and sent officials to the site.

Although Japan has traditionally been known for its safety, this has been changing in recent years, with the number of senseless crimes, often committed by teenagers, rising rapidly.

"These are not ordinary times," said Katsuhiro Kinoshita, the father of a sixth-grader at the school. "I felt the blood drain from my face when I heard."

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters: "This is a terrible incident. I am very worried about the children."

In 1999, a seven-year-old schoolboy was murdered after a man entered a school playground and stabbed him to death.

Last year, one 17-year-old boy bludgeoned passengers at a trendy Tokyo shopping district with a baseball bat after a fight with his father, another beat his mother to death with a metal bat, while a third stabbed an elderly neighbor to death because he wanted to experience killing someone.

One of the grisliest incidents of recent years, the 1997 murder and beheading of an 11-year-old boy, was carried out by his 14-year-old playmate.

More recently, there has been a wave of incidents on Tokyo's crowded trains, including one in which a man was killed by a fellow passenger enraged at his request for people to step back so he could board.
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Tokyo's Akihabara district, a popular shopping area for consumer electronics, was still in shock on Monday following a killing spree by a 25-year-old man who plowed a rented truck into an intersection full of pedestrians, then began stabbing bystanders at random. The rampage, which left seven dead and 10 injured, was another reminder of a violent side of Japan that is not often discussed.

Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the developed world, yet the country still sees spasms of stunningly brutal, often random killings. The June 8 Akihabara massacre occurred exactly seven years after a former school janitor with a history of mental illness stabbed eight children to death and injured many others at their elementary school near Osaka. The nation has seen a spate of stabbings already this year, including a shopping-mall knife attack in March in which one was slain and seven were injured.

Such crimes are often perpetrated by mentally unstable men in their 20s and 30s, but experts say that gruesome acts committed by adolescents and teenagers have been on the rise for the last five years. The infamous 1997 Kobe case of a 14-year-old boy who strangled and decapitated an 11-year-old friend of his brother and displayed the child's head on a school gate was followed last year by a 17-year-old boy who cut off his mother's head as she slept and delivered it, wrapped, to the nearest police box the following morning. In January, a 16-year-old boy attacked five people with kitchen knives in Tokyo.

In an attempt to make sense of the senseless, experts point to many possible reasons for these violent outbursts. Because of the stigma of mental illness that exists in Japan, the mentally ill often go untreated. Economic conditions are also blamed. "The gap between wealth and poverty has widened for the past five years," says Mitsuyuki Maniwa, professor emeritus of criminal sociology at Shizuoka University. Society's have-nots "lose everything, from hope to motivation in life, pride, and self-esteem." Maniwa points out that the alleged Akihabara killer, whom police identified as Tomohiro Kato, was "not making an easy living" as a temporary factory employee. "This kind of society and the way it works causes this kind of crime," Maniwa maintains.

Japanese youth face similar pressures because of the country's demanding and competitive educational system. "Young people have been pushed into a corner," says Maniwa. Teachers and parents hold children personally responsible for their failures, so kids "blame themselves and run into a brick wall."

While mass murderers are sometimes too mentally unstable to explain their acts, the suspect in the Akihabara killings gave police reasons that were chillingly mundane. After his arrest, the left side of his face smeared with blood, Kato allegedly told police that he was tired of life and came to Akihabara to kill people — and it didn't matter who they were. The killer, according to the Mainichi newspaper reportedly posted details of his plans in a series of 28 messages on an online discussion board. The postings were sent through his mobile phone. The last came 20 minutes before the rampage began. It read: "It's time."




Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1812808,00.html#ixzz2FwzwJpKm