Another shooting at the Empire State Building!

[Seb]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/24/justice/new-york-empire-state/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

[yoshi]

Can i say that.

I'm not suprised?

[Supertoaster]

everybody is just going "fuck this" and shooting everyone

[Cake Faice]

Oh god everyone is fueling the fire for the anti-gun laws.

[ursus]

I wouldn't really call this a shooting spree, from what it looks like this guy had a grudge against someone and took it out by shooting him.

[Eion Kilant 739]

So the guy had a grudge, he shot the guy, walked away, some people chased him, police got to him, he tried to shoot the police, he died.

Shortly after the incident, Bellevue Hospital reported that it was treating six victims for gunshot wounds. None of the injuries was considered life-threatening.

I feel like including this well written comment:

Firstly, the police here did a fine job. For those that claim they can hit the xring dead center, do that with adrenaline rushing and a gun pointed at you and have a moving target. Not so easy. Secondly, should the police have just let him walk away? The police did the absolute right thing in engaging that person. Those that were hit by stray bullets should be taken to the hospital and cared for and if they were hit by police rounds, then of course they should be compensated.

If people believe that more guns should be out there, that is a separate debate and people are entitled to their own beliefs about guns. But don't start with the, "an armed citizen could take this person out" nonsense. As I recall, in Arizona, where you can probably get a free handgun when you supersize your value meal at Mcdonalds, everyone allowed to be armed to the hilt didn't prevent congresswoman Gabby Giffords from taking a round to the head as well as having multiple dead with a child among the dead.

Shooting in a crowded city is the worst thing that can happen, but the police acted properly under the circumstances they faced.

[Nemisous]

Damn even the police accidentally injured some people in the shoot out. 

[Rocket50]

Oh god everyone is fueling the fire for the anti-gun laws.

To be fair, most injuries were because of bullet fragmentation by police officers

[Jman]

Oh god everyone is fueling the fire for the anti-gun laws.

Interesting thing is even before the shooting happened we received our September debate topic:

September 2012 - Resolved: Congress should renew the Federal Assault Weapons Ban.

(For those of you who don't know the Federal Assault Weapons Ban was created under and endorsed heavily by Bill Clinton as a subtitle of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a federal law in the United States that included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms, so called "assault weapons". There was no legal definition of "assault weapons" in the U.S. prior to the law's enactment. The 10-year ban was passed by Congress on September 13, 1994, and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton the same day. The ban only applied to weapons manufactured after the date of the ban's enactment.
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired on September 13, 2004. Attempts at renewing it have failed for the most part, not even being able to make it to the floor for a vote.


So now, this shooting happens. Not only does the Affirmative have the Aurora Shooting to use, but now they have this to use too. I feel like this is going to be a very hard month for the Negative side. If you are on Affirmative you can basically imply to the judges that your opponent endorses the easily preventable slaughter of innocent people.

But here's the catch. We have a National Debate tournament at Yale from September 21st - 24th and you can't just pick one side of it, which means I might get boned being stuck on the Negative side with nothing to use except the god damn Second Amendment. However, one can easily argue that the Second Amendment was created back when the personal militias were still a thing. Now-a-days a single life is valued much, much less than it was back then. It's almost fair to say that the Second Amendment is completely outdated and should be repealed.

Then again, on the other hand, it's REALLY going to be hard to find a way to be able to go against the cut-and-dry argument of "You think our constitution is wrong? That's what our country was BASED off of."

If anyone thinks they have a nice viewpoint on the topic please feel free to say it, maybe you'll help me with my case.

[Eion Kilant 739]

Interesting thing is even before the shooting happened we received our September debate topic:(For those of you who don't know the Federal Assault Weapons Ban was created under and endorsed heavily by Bill Clinton as a subtitle of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, a federal law in the United States that included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms, so called "assault weapons". There was no legal definition of "assault weapons" in the U.S. prior to the law's enactment. The 10-year ban was passed by Congress on September 13, 1994, and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton the same day. The ban only applied to weapons manufactured after the date of the ban's enactment.
The Federal Assault Weapons Ban expired on September 13, 2004. Attempts at renewing it have failed for the most part, not even being able to make it to the floor for a vote.


So now, this shooting happens. Not only does the Affirmative have the Aurora Shooting to use, but now they have this to use too. I feel like this is going to be a very hard month for the Negative side. If you are on Affirmative you can basically imply to the judges that your opponent endorses the easily preventable slaughter of innocent people.

But here's the catch. We have a National Debate tournament at Yale from September 21st - 24th and you can't just pick one side of it, which means I might get boned being stuck on the Negative side with nothing to use except the god damn Second Amendment. However, one can easily argue that the Second Amendment was created back when the personal militias were still a thing. Now-a-days a single life is valued much, much less than it was back then. It's almost fair to say that the Second Amendment is completely outdated and should be repealed.

Then again, on the other hand, it's REALLY going to be hard to find a way to be able to go against the cut-and-dry argument of "You think our constitution is wrong? That's what our country was BASED off of."

If anyone thinks they have a nice viewpoint on the topic please feel free to say it, maybe you'll help me with my case.

While we do not agree on several things I think we can agree on a few.

The killer fired two shots. (Head and back of torso)
The killer raised his weapon to shoot at the police and was shot dead.

If the law had still been in effect it would not have prevented him from doing that. Sorry, but that lengthy post doesn't apply as much to this situation.

I'm also fairly sure that the things banned were guns that have more than 10 bullets per clip in them, on a related note.

[Captain Communism]

Oh god everyone is fueling the fire for the anti-gun laws.

The way I see it, a soon-to-be criminal isn't going to care if the gun he's going to kill someone with was obtained legally or not.
People need to realize banning guns won't decrease the crimerate, but actually INCREASE it, and I don't mean violence either.
The fact is, you're going to end up with a shit-ton of illegal firearms to deal with, as well as people obtaining them via illegal methods. All of these are crimes, thus unnessecarily increasing the police force's workload on something not as important as, say, a rapist or mugger.

[Deathie]

The way I see it, a soon-to-be criminal isn't going to care if the gun he's going to kill someone with was obtained legally or not.

Bear in mind I'm against gun prohibition,


but that's a pretty stupid thing to say.

If someone wanted to kill someone and not get caught then they'd use a "disposable" or an illegal gun.

Otherwise, if someone just lost their shits and decided to go on a murder spree, they don't care if they're caught or not.

It'd be harder to obtain a firearm illegally than it is to do it legally.

[Captain Communism]

Bear in mind I'm against gun prohibition,


but that's a pretty stupid thing to say.

If someone wanted to kill someone and not get caught then they'd use a "disposable" or an illegal gun.

Otherwise, if someone just lost their shits and decided to go on a murder spree, they don't care if they're caught or not.

It'd be harder to obtain a firearm illegally than it is to do it legally.

I think you misunderstood me.
By "soon-to-be criminal" I meant one who KNEW they were about to commit a crime. They're not going to care if their tool of destruction is legal or not. They're about to kill/rob somebody, for crying out loud.

[Deathie]

I think you misunderstood me.
By "soon-to-be criminal" I meant one who KNEW they were about to commit a crime. They're not going to care if their tool of destruction is legal or not. They're about to kill/rob somebody, for crying out loud.

Ones easier to obtain than the other though.

[·UηİŦ··]

The only time I'll be surprised anymore is when there's a shooting on the ISS.

Or Atlantis.

Or there's a bunch of robots ripping the White House up.

It's sad to see people die, but I'm pretty sure there were shootings every single day wherein someone died/got injured by a stray bullet, and it never went mainstream because it wasn't in front of a landmark.