German School Gunman: Germany has strict gun laws, why did it still happen? - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

Cynthetiq · 03-11-2009, 08:46 AM

Quote:

View: German school gunman 'kills 15'
Source: BBC
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German school gunman 'kills 15'

German school gunman 'kills 15'

Fifteen people have been killed by a teenage gunman who went on a rampage in south-west Germany, officials say.

Among the dead were nine pupils and three teachers at the Albertville secondary school in Winnenden, north of Stuttgart, police say. click to show

I was interested in seeing just what Germany's gun control laws were after this was in the papers this morning. I'm sorry for the families this affects. I started looking up German gun control laws and was surprised to find that they are actually some of the toughest in Western Europe.

It lead me to this article from 1995:

Quote:

View: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON GUN CONTROL
Source: SAF
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INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON GUN CONTROL
New York Law School Journal of International and Comparative Law
1995 Symposium: Guns at Home, Guns on the Street: An International Perspective [p.259]

INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES ON GUN CONTROL
Joachim J. Savelsberg *

Copyright © 1995 by the New York Law School Journal of International and Comparative Law; Joachim J. Savelsberg

Most of you, I assume, are Americans, and I hope you do not feel too bad at this point after hearing many bad things that foreigners say about your country. Before I add something to all that nasty talk, let me say that I moved to this country five years ago and I love it. I also got married to one of your fellow citizens, and I have two American daughters, and I like it all very much. Having said that, and hopefully, making you feel a little better, let me move onto this nasty topic that brought us together here.

I will tell you a simple story in a short amount of time. It is basically a story about Germany, gun control, and gun violence in Germany, and I certainly will make a few comparative references to the American situation. I primarily speak as a scholar, not as an activist. I will give you some basic empirical data, add a few analytical thoughts, and then draw some conclusions. I think we can draw policy conclusions from these analytical things that I will talk about.

My observations are very straightforward, and I want to summarize three basic correlations that appear when we look at the situation within Germany and compare Germany and the United States. The first correlation, comparing Germany and the United States: gun control in Germany is much tighter than gun control in the United States. At the same time, gun violence in German society is much lower than gun violence in the United States. I will give you a few more specific numbers in just a little while.

The second correlation that I want to talk about at a little more length is one that appears when we look at Germany over time. Gun control has not always been the same in German society. In 1972, a time of very high tension followed the peak of terrorist activities. There was a lot of pressure on government to do something about it. One of the things the Federal Government did was to pass one of the toughest gun control laws in the Western world. The passing of this legislation was followed by a consistent and substantial reduction of gun violence in Germany. Let me give you a few numbers. For example, the number of violent crimes, [p.260] involving the use of guns declined from almost 13,000 in 1971 to about 4,000 in 1990, a reduction by two-thirds. [1] More specifically, the number of homicides committed with a gun declined from 644 in 1970, again by almost two-thirds, to 224 in 1990. This number is about three percent of the gun-related homicides that occur in the United States, in a population that is about one-third the size of the American population.

One might, of course, suspect that this decline in gun violence may just be a consequence of a declining inclination of Germans to commit violent crimes altogether during the 1970s and 1980s. That is not the case. The number of violent crimes during this period almost doubled, from approximately 60,000 to around 110,000 cases, an almost doubling of violent crime cases while the number of violent crimes involving guns declined to one-third of its original level. [2] Again, introduction of tough gun control legislation correlates with a considerable reduction in gun violence. I want to give you a few basic pieces of information about the quality of that legislation. First, the basic principle of the Gun Control Act of 1972 [Waffengesetz] says, "The number of gun owners and the number and types of guns in private property must be limited to the lowest level possible in the light of interest of public safety." [3] More specifically, every person who wants to own a gun or carry a gun in public needs a special permit. I'll say a few things about the conditions under which people receive this kind of permit. To begin, the right to own a gun is very restrictive. It requires a government permit which is based on four certifications. First, the certification of need. You can document the need to own a gun if you are a member of a government certified gun club. Getting such a gun club certificate is a rather restrictive process. Or you can document the need to own a gun if you are a hunter. Again, getting a hunting license is much more restrictive in Germany than it is in the United States. Second, you have to document trustworthiness through the local police authorities. Such trustworthiness involves no prior violent criminal record. Third, you need to be certified in the technical knowledge about the consequences of firearms. Technical knowledge is based on a test that people must take with the district government. And fourth, you must document physical fitness. It is certainly at least partly the result of this legislation that only [p.261] 2.1 million of 80 million German citizens own guns. That is about three percent of the entire population. [4]

Now, the right to bear firearms in public is, again, much more restrictive. It is so restrictive that, in fact, only 30,000 out of 80 million people own the right to bear firearms in public. It is limited, for example, to very prominent figures who can make a claim that their lives are in danger. It is also limited to members of certain occupations, such as guards of money transports. So there is a very small number of people who walk around with guns in public.

Let me move on to the third correlation I had announced. This results from a recent, what we call in the social sciences, natural experiment that happened in Germany. During the past five years, Germany experienced a rather rapid increase in the availability of guns. It was partly a result of demoralized Soviet troops in the eastern part of the country selling their weapons to the German population, partly to the underground market. It is interesting to observe that during exactly this period of increased gun availability, violent crime involving guns increased considerably from 4,000 cases in 1990 to 7,700 cases in 1993; homicides involving guns increased by fifty percent, from 224 cases in 1990 to 314 cases in 1993. [5] So, the higher the availability of guns, the more use of guns appears in violent crime. This is really the common denominator of all three correlations that I presented.

Now I come to the analytical part. I talked about correlations. Do correlations imply causal relations? Is it indeed the availability of guns that leads to gun violence? Typically no, correlations never necessarily imply causal relations. Thus, we have to ask for potential control variables, or additional factors that might lead to lower gun violence, in German society, and there are three potential factors that come to mind very easily. The first factor is the toughness of the criminal justice system. When people talked about caning in Singapore recently and learned at the same time that the crime rate in Singapore is very low, the common conclusion in almost all the news media and public talk was, "Well, if they have such a tough criminal justice system and those cruel forms of corporal punishment, of course they have a low crime rate." People saw a correlation and concluded a causal relation, not seeing all the other differences between American and Singapore societies. The second factor is cultural differences, especially with regard to the culture of violence in both societies. The third factor is sociological or socioeconomic differences that we will discuss.[p.262]

I want to comment very briefly on a couple of these differences. Tougher criminal justice system in Germany? No, nowhere in the Western world is the criminal justice system tougher and more punitive than in the United States. This cannot be an explanation for lower rates of violent crime or gun violence in Germany. If anything, the opposite is true. The United States is one of the few countries in the Western world that practices capital punishment, and we know from comparative and international research that the practice of capital punishment increases the rate of violent crime in a society. It legitimizes the use of violence in order to resolve grievances that people have. In particular, the award-winning study by Archer and Gartner on violence in cross-national comparison demonstrated this.

In addition, of course, there is the incarceration rate. After surpassing the former Soviet Union and South Africa, the United States now imprisons more people than any other country. If anything, the fact that it is no longer a stigma for most people in the ghettos to be sentenced to a prison or jail term certainly means that imprisonment does not work as a deterrent to committing crimes, including violent and gun crimes. So, if anything, it is the tougher and extremely punitive nature of the American criminal justice system that contributes to higher rates of violent crime in American society. That conclusion is very much against the common sense of current American public debates, as I'm well aware, and as I see confirmed by some shaking heads in this room.

Finally, I want to talk about the other control variable that is extremely important, that of socioeconomic conditions. There are a number of important differences between American and German societies, but the one that I think is most important is that the permanently deprived population is much smaller in Germany than in the United States. The poverty rate in Germany is estimated at somewhere between six and eight percent, while in the United States it is estimated to be at least fifteen percent. In addition, poverty in the United States means something much graver than it means in Germany. William J. Wilson, from the University of Chicago, has found that during the 1970s, the number of inner-city people living in districts with at least forty percent of their population living below the poverty line doubled in one decade. [6] So there is more poverty, and poverty means something more serious in this country.

This is important because the vast majority of homicides in the United States involve young black men. I think that just listing and summarizing [p.263] headline news or local news with all the cruel events--and not looking into the socioeconomic background factors of that violence--is very misleading and problematic.

Let me get back to my original question before I draw a few brief conclusions. Why is there so much less gun violence in Germany? Does gun control have anything to do with it, or is it due to other differences, such as criminal punishment, societal and cultural differences? Concluding answer one: the lower rate of gun violence in Germany, especially after the 1972 law, is not the result of a tougher criminal justice system. If anything, the opposite is true. Concluding answer two: this leaves primarily two possible explanations: gun control and society. I think there are a lot of reasons to argue that in combination, both society, which determines the inclination of people to commit violent crimes, and very liberal gun control, which makes violent means available to people in a society, are what contribute to this excessive and extremely high rate of violent crime and gun violence in American society. Finally, while sociological factors and interaction effects between sociological factors and violent means are very important, I think that the German case also suggests an independent effect of gun control, and I have given some empirical data to that account.

* Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, he received degrees from the University of Trier (Federal Republic of Germany) (Doctorate, 1982) and from the University of Cologne (Federal Republic of Germany) (Diplom, 1978). He has been a visiting fellow at Johns Hopkins University as well as Harvard University. He has written extensively on criminal issues involving the United States, white-collar crime, and the use of the system of punishment and sentencing in the United States.

1. BUNDESKRIMINALAMT, KRIMINALSTATISTIK (1992).

2. Id.

3. Letter from the Minister of the Interior of Lower Saxony to the District Governments and the Landeskriminalamt of Lower Saxony (June 8, 1993) (on file with author).

4. Ludwig Rademacher, Burger bewafen sich, 12 FOCUS 74 (1994).

5. BUNDESKRIMINALAMT, supra note 1.

6. WILLIAM J. WILSON, THE TRULY DISADVANTAGED: THE INNER CITY, THE UNDERCLASS, AND PUBLIC POLICY 46 (1987).

I'd like to keep American gun control laws out of this conversation as we've done that to death, but I'd like to see information about other countries and their laws and effects on the population.

Can anyone here shed some light on other countries and their restriction to guns where there have been gun violence upon the populace like this? I know that Finland had a school shooter a couple years ago.

roachboy · 03-11-2009, 09:12 AM

well, the first question really has to do with relative frequency of this sort of incident. consider how often this sort of thing has happened in the united states as over against its frequency in germany. for example, there was a rampage in alabama yesterday on the same scale that seems somehow to have been occluded this morning behind the german situation--which in part is explicable by the relative novelty of the german case.

i'll do a bit of digging around and post something more to the point regarding gun controls in france later, unless someone else with either more intimate knowledge or more time to research gets to it first.

Willravel · 03-11-2009, 09:27 AM

Quote:

...the murder rate is nearly six times higher in the US than in Germany.

Murder Rate in the United States and Germany - Atlantic Review - Analysis of Transatlantic Relations and U.S. Foreign Policy

Still, I'm not 100% sure gun control laws are the determining factor in the difference. They may contribute, but without a more in depth study, it's hard to say there aren't other aspects that come into play. It seems to be correlative, but not necessarily causal.

Xerxys · 03-11-2009, 09:47 AM

Damn this forum, lately I have taken to googling simple words I thought I knew. Will, please expand more on what you mean by ...

"It seems to be correlative, but not necessarily causal."

And what exactly do you (all of you) think the key to minimizing crime and violence in such a massivley populated area such as the USA would be.

Personally, I wonder if a miracle such as an entire culture change is possible. I honestly beleive in capital punishment and I think the laws that govern most of the USA are in fact, stellar.

Cynthetiq · 03-11-2009, 10:03 AM

It refers to something you learn quickly when dealing with statistics.

Quote:

Correlation does not imply causation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Correlation does not imply causation is a phrase used in the sciences and the statistics to emphasize that correlation between two variables does not imply that one causes the other. Its negation, correlation proves causation, is a logical fallacy by which two events that occur together are claimed to have a cause-and-effect relationship. The fallacy is also known as cum hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for "with this, therefore because of this") and false cause. By contrast, the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc requires that one event occurs before the other and so may be considered a type of cum hoc.

If we're talking about massive populations as the mode for the construct of the laws, then we'd have to look to China and India. They would have similar if not more violent crimes with guns and such.

I'm sure that there is some culture that is attached to this in some dimension.

dksuddeth · 03-11-2009, 10:11 AM

the answer to this is simple. laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of (insert favorite group of people here) do not work. UNLESS, the government in question has the political capital and will to force total disarmament on it's populace. Otherwise, it's an exercise in futility.

roachboy · 03-11-2009, 10:24 AM

this is from the article will quoted above:

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In the US, there are roughly 17,000 murders a year, of which about 15,000 are committed with firearms. By contrast, Britain, Australia and Canada combined see fewer than 350 gun-related murders each year.

and

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Among Germany's 82 million citizens there have been 794 murders in 2005.

there's obviously an effect to strict gun controls.
how one would move from correlation to cause is problematic, but it always is with aggregated data.

Willravel · 03-11-2009, 10:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xerxys

"It seems to be correlative, but not necessarily causal."

I'm saying it's possible that more restrictive gun laws may have some connection with a lower gun crime rate, but those gun laws aren't necessarily the primary determining factor. We'd need more data to establish that.

Edit: I suspect there is a causal relationship, but that relationship would have to be made with very specific types of gun control. I think it's general knowledge that not all kinds of gun control are the same, so we'd have to specify which gun laws had the greatest effect on crime.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xerxys

And what exactly do you (all of you) think the key to minimizing crime and violence in such a massivley populated area such as the USA would be.

This is a huge question. If there were one thing above all others that could be implemented to reduce crime and violence, I suspect it would be putting major emphasis on conflict resolution, empathy training, and effective communication in early public and private schools, exposing children to mature and effective methods of solving their problems.

spindles · 03-11-2009, 04:21 PM

Even if the US introduced a zero gun policy now, it would be fairly ineffective in that there are already millions of guns out there. In Australia following the shooting in Port Arthur, there was a huge tightening of gun laws and an amnesty allowing people to just walk in and 'give' their guns back to the government. From memory the govt paid for them and the guns were destroyed. Prior to this, you could own a gun if you got a license and there were gun shops around. Now, the only people who have access to guns have a legitimate reason e.g. farmers, law enforcement, hobby shooters (like at a gun club). I'm unsure what the hobbyists do with their guns when not at the range and I have absolutely no idea how to go about buying one. The access to guns is very minimal and there is a *very* low incidence of gun crime.

There are obviously still guns in Oz and therefore there is the possibility of a shooting happening, but the possibility is surely lower than it would otherwise be.

Jehu Salinger · 03-12-2009, 12:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spindles

Even if the US introduced a zero gun policy now, it would be fairly ineffective in that there are already millions of guns out there. In Australia following the shooting in Port Arthur, there was a huge tightening of gun laws and an amnesty allowing people to just walk in and 'give' their guns back to the government. From memory the govt paid for them and the guns were destroyed. Prior to this, you could own a gun if you got a license and there were gun shops around. Now, the only people who have access to guns have a legitimate reason e.g. farmers, law enforcement, hobby shooters (like at a gun club). I'm unsure what the hobbyists do with their guns when not at the range and I have absolutely no idea how to go about buying one. The access to guns is very minimal and there is a *very* low incidence of gun crime.

There are obviously still guns in Oz and therefore there is the possibility of a shooting happening, but the possibility is surely lower than it would otherwise be.

Same thing happened here in Belgium after some kid just started shooting people on the street in Antwerp. After that, gun laws got even tighter than they were, but still people seem to be able to find ways to get them legally, even if they don't actually have the right to own them (e.g. gun clubs etc.) So like Spindles said, as long as guns can be obtained aside from law enforcement and the like, there will always be the possibility of a shooting. Luckily enough, Belgium's a pretty safe place when it comes to that. I honestly shit my pants when I actually do see a "real" weapon; there's a shop that sells hunting rifles not too far from my house, so whenever I walk past their window I start walking a lot faster.

About the shooting in Germany - being a neighbouring country -, this morning the first reports mention the same old same old: the kid lived a very average life, had nothing to complain about at home, had friends, money, ... BUT: two things did appear that also tend to show in these kinds of shootings. One: no one hardly noticed he was around; two: his father was a member of a gun club and had about sixteen guns around at home. Now as far as I know, the gun laws in Germany kind of resemble the ones here in Belgium, so it's the same problem as always: as long as there is access to weapons, there's always going to be people who'll want one. If the kid really didn't get noticed at all, maybe it was killing him inside. Not all kids like to share feelings with a schoolpsychiatrist or school counselor; not all kids want to talk at all about any problems, so put two and two together. It's very possible the boy just crashed, saw the guns and thought: fuck it!
Not that I agree with his actions or anything, but unfortunately, the amount of pressure youngsters are under nowadays (adolescent boys and girls shouldn't have to live under the same kind of stress of having to do school, work in the weekends, have hobbies, find a girlfriend, have a social life, have to fit in, etc...) can really get some kids to break down in a way modern day society doesn't know how to cope with, since everything has to be positive, and especially since apparantly every ache can be cured.

That's in (very) short what my view on the affairs is.
Sorry about the rant

roachboy · 03-12-2009, 06:57 AM

interesting. thanks jehu.

this from today's guardian, more information about this situation which complicates the original story, as often seems to happen:

Quote:

Germany's broken schools

The rigid, old-fashioned German education system is a sad factor in the growing number of attacks on schools
Comments (70)

* Sabine Rennefanz
*

o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 March 2009

Yesterday's massacre at a secondary school in south-west Germany was the third gun spree at a German school in less than ten years. In 2002, a 19-year old murdered 16 people in his former high school. Four years later, an 18-year old entered his school with guns and explosives. Thirty-seven teachers and students were injured.

The pattern is always the same: a male teenager, living in a provincial town, the son of middle-class parents. As in the previous cases, Tim Kretschmer of Winnenden is described by classmates as "the quiet one". He left school last year, started an apprenticeship, loved table-tennis and horror movies: a typical teenager until he put on combat gear and went on a killing spree of shocking brutality.

What went wrong? It is tempting to demand stronger gun laws. After the shooting in Erfurt in 2002, the gun laws were tightened and the minimum age for owning a firearm raised from 18 to 21. Anyone under 25 trying to buy a gun needs to pass a psychological test.

But Kretschmer did not need to buy a gun. He had a father who was an active member of the local shooting club. Shooting clubs are popular in rural Germany. The father apparently did not think it necessary to lock away his weapons or ammunition. He stored his weapons collection as other people might store stamps or stuffed animals. The son just went to his father's workshop and took a Beretta and enough ammunition for 100 shots.

Besides the shockingly irresponsible behaviour of the father, one also needs to look at the situation in schools to explain why Germany might be susceptible to US-style shootings. When the Erfurt shooting took place in 2002, it was partly blamed on the difficult transition from the repressive society of the GDR to an open society. But Winnenden is in the so-called Musterland, the role model federal state of Germany.

There seems to be something wrong with German schools. After the US, Germany is the country with the highest number of teenage gun sprees. In Baden-Wuerttemberg, a number of threats of gun massacres have been made to the police in the last few years. Thankfully, they mostly remained fantasies.

More generally, attacks on teachers and students have become regular incidents. In one borough in Berlin it has been so bad that the council has introduced US-style private security guards at schools.

It might have something to do with the way the German schooling system works. German state schools have remained traditional, hierarchical institutions. Teachers are often quite old and lack social and psychological training. The average age of a teacher in Berlin, for example, is 54. The competition among pupils is tough and performance is the only thing that matters.

Studies have shown that Germany is one of the countries with the least social mobility in Europe. If you fail at school, your chances in life narrow dramatically. During the past ten years – after drastic reforms of the labour market and cuts in the welfare system – the social pressure has risen. Both the teenagers who became killers had problems at school, and for Tim, his former school seems to have epitomised the society he hated.

Sabine Rennefanz: Germany's rigid, old-fashioned education system is a sad factor in the growing number of attacks on schools | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

so you have several factors introduced here.
first, the kid got the weapons from his father, who was a member of a local shooting club. this seems to abstract the situation from questions pertaining to gun control laws as such and pushes it onto micro-level stuff like why didn't this kid's father feel the need to lock up his guns?
second, you have a pattern that's set up and a general explanation for it--of the two, the second seems to me more important, but it isn't developed particularly well in the article (despite the title, which sets it up as the point)....

what do you make of this explanation?

Martian · 03-12-2009, 07:38 AM

Some other articles, revealing salient details

BBC NEWS | Europe | German gunman 'warned of attack'

German gunman 'warned of attack' click to show

And from the AP:

The Roanoke Times: News, sports and entertainment stories and information from the Associated Press

School shooter warned of attack, in chat room click to show

And finally, from Reuters:

Police focus on gunman's father in German shootings | Reuters

Police focus on gunman's father in German shootings click to show

There's a lot of repeated information here, as is often the case when aggregating from multiple news sources. The points that caught my interest are:

- The shooter boasted about his plans to attack the school in a chatroom prior to the shooting. Given that, I wonder if there were any other prior warning signs? The articles also state he was treated for depression, but that investigators are not linking this to the shooting.

- Policies instituted after the 2002 shooting may have kept the death toll from being worse than it was. The principal used the PA system in the school to send a coded message to staff, and police used tactics developed after the prior event. Of particular interest is the fact that the school staff were warned as the event was happening; what did they do correctly to help minimize the danger to their pupils, and what might have been done differently? I haven't had time to look into the policies regarding this in detail, and don't know if they're widely available, but the article seemed to imply that it is a state-wide thing.

- The firearm used in this event was legally owned, and the father of the shooter had stored fourteen of his fifteen guns securely, as per regulations. The weapon used here was a Beretta pistol, and had been left out. Did ease of access to the weapon contribute to the shooter's decision, and is there any way that this could have been mitigated?

It's difficult to discuss this without comparing and contrasting with relevant laws in other nations. There are so many factors involved in discussions like this one, it's hard to know where to even begin.

I will offer more detailed thoughts later, I don't really have time now.

Strange Famous · 03-12-2009, 01:45 PM

As I understand, the gun - an automatic assault rifle - was legally owned by the boys parents.

I think we have very different idea's about what "strict" gun laws are.

To me, and I think most people, they mean for example it not being legal to own a gun.

timalkin · 03-12-2009, 02:12 PM

Lindy · 03-12-2009, 02:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jehu Salinger

....but unfortunately, the amount of pressure youngsters are under nowadays (adolescent boys and girls shouldn't have to live under the same kind of stress of having to do school, work in the weekends, have hobbies, find a girlfriend, have a social life, have to fit in, etc...) can really get some kids to break down in a way modern day society doesn't know how to cope with, since everything has to be positive, and especially since apparantly every ache can be cured...

These are the exact same "stresses" that I experienced as a teen in the 'nineties and that my parents experienced as teens in the 'sixties. I grew up in a rural area with guns all over the place. In my parents day, there were even gun clubs in the schools. I was about ten years old the first time I fired a gun. Guns were (and in rural Kansas, still are) just a part of the peaceful fabric of everyday life. And taking a gun to school and shooting people was just so inconceivably WRONG that the very idea just wouldn't have occurred to us.
Somehow, we have lost the idea of wrong. Things aren't wrong anymore, they are merely 'inappropriate' or 'unwise choices,' or 'unacceptable.' And whatever I do, it's not my fault anyway, it because of society, or the economic system... or it's racism, ...

Lindy

roachboy · 03-12-2009, 03:32 PM

the problem with this "nothing is wrong any more" business in this case is simply that the kid, for whatever reasons, decided to kill himself and take some others out along with him. maybe it followed from the nature of the school system as a whole--but it obviously followed from this particular kid's experience of a particular school. to make linkages is not to do anything but to try to understand something...even something that, in the end, is not really understandable to others because this kid's experience was--and will remain--other than yours.

besides, it's not like people did not kill themselves back in the "good old days"...you heard less about it maybe..but that follows from an aspect of the good old days being rooted in a tendency to close off from the world.

the cartoon version of this would be to say that there was a gun so the kid went off. but that's a cartoon. it might be a cartoon that is like what folk who oppose all gun controls would prefer to think those who oppose them politically on this issue are like. but that's nothing more than a politically motivated projection that functions those who indulge that game to imagine themselves as above and beyond those who oppose them.

on the other hand, the claim that people in the united states value life more than people in other places is thoroughly absurd...same nonsense, different word.

The_Dunedan · 03-12-2009, 05:26 PM

I would like to know, if possible, how many non-US rampage shooters (School shooters especially) were taking psychotropic medication at the time of their murders. In the US, it's damned near 100%, may even -be- 100%, but I'll need to check. Methinks there may be a very strong, -very- nasty correlation here.

Willravel · 03-12-2009, 05:29 PM

That's a fairly outrageous suggestion, Dunedan. Do you have a citation for that?

dksuddeth · 03-12-2009, 06:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel

That's a fairly outrageous suggestion, Dunedan. Do you have a citation for that?

will, I can't believe that up above you're suggesting a correlation between gun laws and gun deaths and at the same time discounting the possibility of a causal relationship behavioral modifying psychotropic medication and shooting rampages.

Willravel · 03-12-2009, 06:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

will, I can't believe that up above you're suggesting a correlation between gun laws and gun deaths and at the same time discounting the possibility of a causal relationship behavioral modifying psychotropic medication and shooting rampages.

I started by posting verifiable statistics, and then I basically said "we still don't have enough information to suggest that the gun control causes the lower gun crime rates".

Dunedun posted as fact that nearly 100% of school shooters are medicated with no source. And all I asked was for some citation.

fresnelly · 03-12-2009, 07:22 PM

8 of the 9 nine victims were female.

Yet another fucking douchebag like Marc Lepine.

Gun control laws are one tool to help prevent this sort of thing but can't take all the burden. If he didn't have easy access to a gun he might not have gone through with it. Yet given his mindest, maybe he would have used a pipe bomb instead.

In this case, I think the work that most needs to be done is in the field of mental health; profiling and identifying human time-bombs like this ahead of time and actually dedicating the resources to deal with them.

Xerxys · 03-12-2009, 07:56 PM

fresnelly, why do I only read "profiling" in your statement?

Gosh, is there no right answer to this?

dksuddeth · 03-12-2009, 11:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel

I started by posting verifiable statistics, and then I basically said "we still don't have enough information to suggest that the gun control causes the lower gun crime rates".

Dunedun posted as fact that nearly 100% of school shooters are medicated with no source. And all I asked was for some citation.

oh. nevermind then.

Fire · 03-17-2009, 11:48 PM

There are LOTS of guns in switzerland, but very little gun crime....

There are no legal handguns in England, but more handgun crime than BEFORE they were banned....

There are lots of guns and lots of gun crime in the US.....

There is a gun ban in mexico, and it has been likened to a warzone.....

Culture is the answer.... people inclined to peaceable lives could be given nuclear weapons and there would be few mushroom clouds.... while violent cultures beget violence.... simple and yet so difficult......

MSD · 03-18-2009, 05:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xerxys

Personally, I wonder if a miracle such as an entire culture change is possible. I honestly beleive in capital punishment and I think the laws that govern most of the USA are in fact, stellar.

It's a heavily studied subject, and the fact is that heavy punishments like the death penalty do not deter criminals because the vast majority who commit crimes do not expect to be caught.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Willravel

This is a huge question. If there were one thing above all others that could be implemented to reduce crime and violence, I suspect it would be putting major emphasis on conflict resolution, empathy training, and effective communication in early public and private schools, exposing children to mature and effective methods of solving their problems.

That's a better idea than I've heard anyone involved in policymaking come up with.

Xerxys · 03-18-2009, 12:14 PM

I agree, harsh punishments is not a deterrent. But really, a harsh punishment for a harsh crime is appropriate in my eyes. I would very much rather pay the extra tax dollars to have someone executed than to have to deal with "rehabilitating" him.

Dealing with these people is hard enough already. Let's just be rid of them and tell our kids "That's what happens if you refuse to eat your vegetables!!!"

Lindy · 03-20-2009, 09:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MSD

It's a heavily studied subject, and the fact is that heavy punishments like the death penalty do not deter criminals because the vast majority who commit crimes do not expect to be caught.

They not only don't expect to get caught, they also know the the likelihood of being actually executed is so very remote. Although it is common to decry the death penalty, we for all practical purposes do not have one.

In its place we have a kind of "death penalty theatre" played by get tough politicians on one side and liberal activists and protesters on the other. Death row inmates are rarely if ever actually executed.

The death penalty will of course fail as a deterrent if it is never actually carried out.

Lindy

KirStang · 03-20-2009, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fire

There are LOTS of guns in switzerland, but very little gun crime....

There are no legal handguns in England, but more handgun crime than BEFORE they were banned....

There are lots of guns and lots of gun crime in the US.....

There is a gun ban in mexico, and it has been likened to a warzone.....

Culture is the answer.... people inclined to peaceable lives could be given nuclear weapons and there would be few mushroom clouds.... while violent cultures beget violence.... simple and yet so difficult......

I was going to suggest a similar idea--perhaps Culture rather than the firearms itself are more causative?

Don't get me wrong, I do believe that the firearm is an enabler that lets the otherwise frustrated youth turn in to a rampaging psycho. BUT

I also believe that pointing to firearms as part of the problem is misguided. The U.S.A. has always been about striking it on your own, more capitalist than socialist. Perhaps this leads to a more adversarial mindset? In contrast (and correct me if I'm wrong as I'm just speculating here), Switzerland is highly socialist, right? Yet they issue every citizen a Sig 556 and there's hardly any gun crime?

In closing, I think Culture and economy predict crime much better than firearm ownership, but, to each their own!

03-11-2009, 09:12 AM	#2 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	well, the first question really has to do with relative frequency of this sort of incident. consider how often this sort of thing has happened in the united states as over against its frequency in germany. for example, there was a rampage in alabama yesterday on the same scale that seems somehow to have been occluded this morning behind the german situation--which in part is explicable by the relative novelty of the german case. i'll do a bit of digging around and post something more to the point regarding gun controls in france later, unless someone else with either more intimate knowledge or more time to research gets to it first. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-11-2009, 10:11 AM	#6 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	the answer to this is simple. laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of (insert favorite group of people here) do not work. UNLESS, the government in question has the political capital and will to force total disarmament on it's populace. Otherwise, it's an exercise in futility. __________________ "no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

03-11-2009, 04:21 PM	#9 (permalink)
spindles Mine is an evil laugh Location: Sydney, Australia	Even if the US introduced a zero gun policy now, it would be fairly ineffective in that there are already millions of guns out there. In Australia following the shooting in Port Arthur, there was a huge tightening of gun laws and an amnesty allowing people to just walk in and 'give' their guns back to the government. From memory the govt paid for them and the guns were destroyed. Prior to this, you could own a gun if you got a license and there were gun shops around. Now, the only people who have access to guns have a legitimate reason e.g. farmers, law enforcement, hobby shooters (like at a gun club). I'm unsure what the hobbyists do with their guns when not at the range and I have absolutely no idea how to go about buying one. The access to guns is very minimal and there is a very low incidence of gun crime. There are obviously still guns in Oz and therefore there is the possibility of a shooting happening, but the possibility is surely lower than it would otherwise be. __________________ who hid my keyboard's PANIC button?

03-12-2009, 07:38 AM	#12 (permalink)
Martian Young Crumudgeon Location: Canada	Some other articles, revealing salient details BBC NEWS \| Europe \| German gunman 'warned of attack' German gunman 'warned of attack' click to show A teenage gunman who killed 15 people in a German school and nearby had given an internet warning before he went on a shooting rampage, German officials say. They say Tim Kretschmer, aged 17, gave the warning in a chatroom before the killings in Winnenden on Wednesday. Kretschmer killed 12 people in the school and three others in the nearby town of Wendlingen. He then shot himself after a shoot-out with police. Police say chatroom users did not take the comments seriously at the time. At a news conference, Baden-Wurttemberg's Interior Minister Heribert Rech said the gunman had spoken of his attack in a chatroom on a German internet portal. He said the message read: "I've had enough. I'm fed up with this horrid life... Always the same". "People are laughing at me... No-one sees my potential... I am scared, I have weapons here, and I will go to my former school tomorrow and then I will really do a grilling." The message then continued: "Possibly I get away, so keep your ears open, you will hear from me tomorrow. Just remember the name of the place, Winnenden." Mr Rech said a German man alerted police about the internet warning after the school shooting. The man said his teenage son told him about the warning only after seeing the news reports. He had not previously taken the threat seriously. Psychiatric care Officials say Kretschmer fired more than 100 shots during Wednesday's attack on his former school. Nine students - eight of them girls - and three teachers died at the Albertville secondary school, many of them shot at close range. Mr Rech said students appeared to have had little time to react. "When their bodies were later found, some of them still had pens in their hands," he said. Germany's Bild newspaper reported students as saying he had gone into one classroom three times, asking students: "Aren't you all dead?" Hans-Dieter Wagner, police director for the Esslingen area, told the news conference Kretschmer had fled the school on foot. In the following three hours, he injured a passerby and shot dead an employee at a psychiatric clinic. He then shot and killed an employee and a customer at a car showroom in a nearby town. Officials say he still had more than 130 rounds of ammunition left when he was cornered by police and shot himself. However, investigators said they could not speak of a connection between that treatment and Kretschmer's rampage. Prosecutors say they may charge Kretschmer's father with failing to secure the gun used by the teenager in the attack. German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said he could not see how a change in the country's weapons laws would have prevented what happened. "We are checking everything but our arms law is very strict," he said. But he said Germany had to consider whether tighter controls on access to violent imagery were needed. Flags are flying at half-mast across Germany on Thursday as a mark of respect for the victims of the shootings. And from the AP: The Roanoke Times: News, sports and entertainment stories and information from the Associated Press School shooter warned of attack, in chat room click to show WINNENDEN, Germany (AP) -- The 17-year-old gunman who went on a rampage at his former school and killed 15 people before taking his own life gave a warning in an Internet chatroom only hours earlier and said he was "sick of this life," officials said Thursday. The suspect, whose name appears as Tim Kretschmer in police documents, told others in the chat room he planned to attack his school in Winnenden, said Baden Wuerttemburg state Interior Minister Heribert Rech. Rech said the suspect wrote, "You will hear from me tomorrow, remember the name of a place called Winnenden." In the first indication of a motive in the shooting, Rech said the teenager told others in the German-language chat room that: "Everyone laughs at me, nobody recognizes my potential." "I'm serious. ... I have a weapon here," Rech said the youth wrote. "Early tomorrow morning I will go to my former school." Rech said the chat had occurred the night before the attack, but a police official, Erwin Hetger, later said it was in the early morning Wednesday, about six hours before the 9:30 a.m. shooting. The youth ended the chat saying, "No reports to the police now, don't worry, I'm just baiting you." A Bavarian man told police about the chat after the school shooting in Winnenden had taken place, Rech said. He told authorities his 17-year-old son only told him about it after seeing the news reports and had not taken the threat seriously, replying to the message: LOL - shortform for "laughing out loud." Investigator Siegfried Mahler said authorities had learned that the suspect was treated for depression in 2008, with five visits to a psychiatrist between April and September at an area clinic. He was supposed to continue the treatment at another clinic, but apparently did not show up, Mahler said. Despite the high death toll, the shooting could have been worse if the principal of the high school had not been able to warn teachers with a prearranged code over the public address system when the suspect burst into the school. After the suspect entered the school in Winnenden on Wednesday morning and opened fire, the principal put the emergency plan in effect, quickly broadcasting a coded message to teachers: "Frau Koma is coming," students told German media. "Then our teacher closed the door and said we should close the windows and sit on the floor," a student, identified only as Kim S., told ZDF television. In German the word "amoklauf" is used to describe school shootings, and "koma" is the reverse of the word "amok." Hetger said the coded alert was worked out by German educators after a deadly school shooting in Erfurt in 2002 as a way to warn teachers. Hetger said that police in Baden-Wuerttemburg had received special training that involved sending small teams into the building in the event of a school shooting, as happened on Wednesday. He credited this, coupled with the warning from the principal, for preventing further deaths. Although the gunman shot at the officers as they entered the building, they succeeded in chasing him from the premises. After he escaped, he hijacked a car and was eventually caught in a police shootout. The rampage ended with 15 victims slain and the assailant taking his own life, authorities said. His victims were primarily female: eight of nine students killed were girls, and all three teachers were women. Three men were killed later by the suspect as he fled. The dark-haired teen, shown wearing glasses in pictures on German television, apparently took the weapon from his father's collection of 15 firearms along with a "multitude of ammunition," police said. His father, a businessman, was a member of the local gun club and kept the weapons locked away except for the pistol, which was kept in the bedroom. The high school was closed Thursday, still cordoned off by red and white police tape as investigators pored through the building. Scores of candles lit by mourners adorned the grounds amid bunches of flowers and notes with messages and questions like "Why?" A man carried a sign saying, "God: Where were you?" The government ordered all federal buildings to fly their flags at half staff, and schools across the country held moments of silence for the victims. Germany's national soccer league, the Bundesliga, said players would wear black armbands in upcoming games. Injured student Patrick S., 15, was quoted by Bild newspaper as saying Kretschmer burst into his German class at about 9:30 a.m. "We flipped over the desks to duck behind for cover. ... Suddenly I saw that I was hit - in the back, in the arm and in the cheek," he was quoted as saying. "Suddenly he was gone and we barricaded the door. And then I saw my classmate Chantal. She sat at the door. Dead." Local police spokesman Nik Brenner said that authorities had found 60 shell casings in the school. And finally, from Reuters: Police focus on gunman's father in German shootings \| Reuters Police focus on gunman's father in German shootings click to show By Nicola Leske WINNENDEN, Germany (Reuters) - German authorities are looking into whether to press charges against the gun-collecting father of the teenager who went on a shooting rampage at his former school on Wednesday, killing 15 people. The motive for the attack by 17-year-old Tim Kretschmer remained unclear a day after the massacre in the southwestern town of Winnenden. The teenager, who neighbors described as a loner with a fondness for violent videos, appears to have taken his own life after police engaged him in a shootout hours after he fled the school and hijacked a car. Kretschmer had taken a legally-registered 9-millimetre Beretta pistol owned by his father, a member of a shooting club. Police said the father's other 14 guns were locked in a gun-closet as required by German law, but that he kept the Beretta in his bedroom. "Everything here points to negligence on the part of the father as far as the storage of this weapon is concerned," said police spokesman Ralf Michelfelder. He said it was now up to local prosecutors to decide whether to press charges against the father. Germany toughened its gun laws in 2002 after 19-year-old Robert Steinhauser shot dead 16 people, mainly teachers, and himself at a high school in the eastern German city of Erfurt. The changes raised the minimum age for gun ownership to 21 from 18 and required gun buyers under 25 to present a certificate of medical and psychological health. German gun control laws already required applicants to pass rigorous exams that can take up to a year, but there are close to eight million legally held weapons in the country, roughly one for every 10 people. Schools were closed in Winnenden on Thursday but students streamed to the Albertville Realschule, scene of the shootings, with flowers, candles, CDs and stuffed animals. Some stood in silent grief, some cried and some clung to friends or parents. Police said on Thursday Kretschmer had fired 60 rounds in the school after entering a classroom at around 9.30 a.m. (0830 GMT). He shot many of his victims in the head at close range and appears to have targeted women. Eight of the nine students and all three of the teachers he killed in the school were female. When police arrived at the school Kretschmer fled, shot another person in front of a nearby psychiatric clinic and then forced a motorist to drive him out of Winnenden, a town of 27,000 near Stuttgart. He jumped out of the hijacked car in Wendlingen, some 30 km (20 miles) from the school, shot two men at a car dealership and severely injured two policemen before apparently turning the gun on himself. There's a lot of repeated information here, as is often the case when aggregating from multiple news sources. The points that caught my interest are: - The shooter boasted about his plans to attack the school in a chatroom prior to the shooting. Given that, I wonder if there were any other prior warning signs? The articles also state he was treated for depression, but that investigators are not linking this to the shooting. - Policies instituted after the 2002 shooting may have kept the death toll from being worse than it was. The principal used the PA system in the school to send a coded message to staff, and police used tactics developed after the prior event. Of particular interest is the fact that the school staff were warned as the event was happening; what did they do correctly to help minimize the danger to their pupils, and what might have been done differently? I haven't had time to look into the policies regarding this in detail, and don't know if they're widely available, but the article seemed to imply that it is a state-wide thing. - The firearm used in this event was legally owned, and the father of the shooter had stored fourteen of his fifteen guns securely, as per regulations. The weapon used here was a Beretta pistol, and had been left out. Did ease of access to the weapon contribute to the shooter's decision, and is there any way that this could have been mitigated? It's difficult to discuss this without comparing and contrasting with relevant laws in other nations. There are so many factors involved in discussions like this one, it's hard to know where to even begin. I will offer more detailed thoughts later, I don't really have time now. __________________ I wake up in the morning more tired than before I slept I get through cryin' and I'm sadder than before I wept I get through thinkin' now, and the thoughts have left my head I get through speakin' and I can't remember, not a word that I said - Ben Harper, Show Me A Little Shame

03-12-2009, 01:45 PM	#13 (permalink)
Strange Famous follower of the child's crusade?	As I understand, the gun - an automatic assault rifle - was legally owned by the boys parents. I think we have very different idea's about what "strict" gun laws are. To me, and I think most people, they mean for example it not being legal to own a gun. __________________ "Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered." The Gospel of Thomas

03-11-2009, 09:47 AM	#4 (permalink)
Xerxys Junkie Location: My head.	Damn this forum, lately I have taken to googling simple words I thought I knew. Will, please expand more on what you mean by ... "It seems to be correlative, but not necessarily causal." And what exactly do you (all of you) think the key to minimizing crime and violence in such a massivley populated area such as the USA would be. Personally, I wonder if a miracle such as an entire culture change is possible. I honestly beleive in capital punishment and I think the laws that govern most of the USA are in fact, stellar.

03-12-2009, 02:12 PM	#14 (permalink)
timalkin Addict Location: watching from the treeline	.. __________________ Trinity: "What do you need?" Neo: "Guns. Lots of guns." -The Matrix Last edited by timalkin; 12-20-2010 at 07:36 PM..

03-12-2009, 03:32 PM	#16 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	the problem with this "nothing is wrong any more" business in this case is simply that the kid, for whatever reasons, decided to kill himself and take some others out along with him. maybe it followed from the nature of the school system as a whole--but it obviously followed from this particular kid's experience of a particular school. to make linkages is not to do anything but to try to understand something...even something that, in the end, is not really understandable to others because this kid's experience was--and will remain--other than yours. besides, it's not like people did not kill themselves back in the "good old days"...you heard less about it maybe..but that follows from an aspect of the good old days being rooted in a tendency to close off from the world. the cartoon version of this would be to say that there was a gun so the kid went off. but that's a cartoon. it might be a cartoon that is like what folk who oppose all gun controls would prefer to think those who oppose them politically on this issue are like. but that's nothing more than a politically motivated projection that functions those who indulge that game to imagine themselves as above and beyond those who oppose them. on the other hand, the claim that people in the united states value life more than people in other places is thoroughly absurd...same nonsense, different word. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

03-12-2009, 05:26 PM	#17 (permalink)
The_Dunedan Junkie	I would like to know, if possible, how many non-US rampage shooters (School shooters especially) were taking psychotropic medication at the time of their murders. In the US, it's damned near 100%, may even -be- 100%, but I'll need to check. Methinks there may be a very strong, -very- nasty correlation here.

03-12-2009, 05:29 PM	#18 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	That's a fairly outrageous suggestion, Dunedan. Do you have a citation for that?

03-12-2009, 07:22 PM	#21 (permalink)
fresnelly Functionally Appropriate Location: Toronto	8 of the 9 nine victims were female. Yet another fucking douchebag like Marc Lepine. Gun control laws are one tool to help prevent this sort of thing but can't take all the burden. If he didn't have easy access to a gun he might not have gone through with it. Yet given his mindest, maybe he would have used a pipe bomb instead. In this case, I think the work that most needs to be done is in the field of mental health; profiling and identifying human time-bombs like this ahead of time and actually dedicating the resources to deal with them. __________________ Building an artificial intelligence that appreciates Mozart is easy. Building an A.I. that appreciates a theme restaurant is the real challenge - Kit Roebuck - Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life

03-12-2009, 07:56 PM	#22 (permalink)
Xerxys Junkie Location: My head.	fresnelly, why do I only read "profiling" in your statement? Gosh, is there no right answer to this?

03-17-2009, 11:48 PM	#24 (permalink)
Fire Warrior Smith Location: missouri	There are LOTS of guns in switzerland, but very little gun crime.... There are no legal handguns in England, but more handgun crime than BEFORE they were banned.... There are lots of guns and lots of gun crime in the US..... There is a gun ban in mexico, and it has been likened to a warzone..... Culture is the answer.... people inclined to peaceable lives could be given nuclear weapons and there would be few mushroom clouds.... while violent cultures beget violence.... simple and yet so difficult...... __________________ Thought the harder, Heart the bolder, Mood the more as our might lessens

03-18-2009, 12:14 PM	#26 (permalink)
Xerxys Junkie Location: My head.	I agree, harsh punishments is not a deterrent. But really, a harsh punishment for a harsh crime is appropriate in my eyes. I would very much rather pay the extra tax dollars to have someone executed than to have to deal with "rehabilitating" him. Dealing with these people is hard enough already. Let's just be rid of them and tell our kids "That's what happens if you refuse to eat your vegetables!!!"