Mass shooting at church in Texas, shooter dead, multiple victims

[jimboa24]

Massive gun control laws worked in australia

And of course they'll work here. Why, look at how perfectly and effectively we've eliminated drugs and all drug-related crime simply by making illicit drugs illegal! Problem solved!

[Aehl]

BTW, the next time anytone uses "gun deaths" as an excuse for gun control, please do me a favour and remove the suicides?

Suicide is not "gun violence".

[Machismo]

It was probably an atheist Antifa thug who thought he was dealing some kind of blow against fundamental Christian, right-wing America by shooting up a Baptist church.

That's a lot of speculation. Do you have any evidence to actually back up that claim?

[mage21]

You keep shifting those goal posts

No, just trying to respond to all your varied arguments.

[jimboa24]

aha , no, he followed a bunch of "skeptic" channels which if you arent in a cave you know skeptic youtube channels just make excuses and praise donadl trump and the alt right 24/7 nice try though all of the atheist are on the alt right bandwagon if you watch any of there YT channels

Skeptic channels also love to bash religion. Still not ruling out a militant atheist.

[mage21]

That's a lot of speculation. Do you have any evidence to actually back up that claim?

It does seem like it might have been an anti-religious guy with murderous tendencies. Which there are a lot of people with murderous tendencies, this one might have just been of the anti-religious variety. I'm not ready to subscribe to the Antifa angle yet. There's no evidence of that. None that I've seen.

[Allybeboba]

Massive gun control laws worked in australia

Worked well in Columbia too.

[Captain N]

No, just trying to respond to all your varied arguments.

My varied arguments -- That more people are killed with firearms than with vehicles?

You brought up the Nice attacks where 87 people were killed by a truck driver -- I countered with Paris 2015 where 137 were killed by firearms.

Then you went off on a tangent about France's gun control even though they've had no major firearm casualties since 2015 and the ones before that are much much smaller than the shootings we have here in the United States. So if you're going to bullshit -- at least own up to it.

[Machismo]

Here's the thing that people don't get, gun-rights supporters fully understand that these things are going to happen. Contrary to the narrative that many will try and push, guns don't really make people safer. We simply like guns, and want to be able to own them. Mass shootings are an expected consequence, and they are something we are willing to accept in keeping that freedom.

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It does seem like it might have been an anti-religious guy with murderous tendencies. Which there are a lot of people with murderous tendencies, this one might have just been of the anti-religious variety. I'm not ready to subscribe to the Antifa angle yet. There's no evidence of that. None that I've seen.

I also haven't seen anything reliable that he was an atheist, either, especially after it was reported that he led Bible study classes.

[Endus]

@Endus had been in for like an hour.

xskarma already issued a comment/warning upthread, but I wanted to respond personally since I got three direct pings alone myself, including that one there. The mods aren't here 24/7. We're paid volunteers, and we do this in our off-time. I often leave a browser window up, and it may have a page loaded into MMO-C, so I may show as "online", but at the same time, as tonight, I might be off cooking chili and getting dinner ready since about 3pm (four hours ago, for anyone not in EST). I only sat back down at my PC about 20 minutes or so ago, and that's been spent cleaning things up along with some of the other mods who'd already started.

We're not sitting around idle, eating popcorn and watching the forums burn, or something. Reports work fine. Repeated pings won't help; me logging into see 3 mentions isn't going to get me to swing by any faster than if I saw one mention, or a PM (which is probably better). Try and use that for SUPER bad cases (and the behaviour in this thread counts, I'm speaking to the attitude some were expressing about us not "doing our jobs", not that we were pinged at all). If I start getting PMs or pings for every little thing, it's gonna stop meaning anything and won't get more attention than reports already do; I'm asking that you keep this stuff to only the really exceptional stuff so it doesn't get misused.

[Allybeboba]

BTW, the next time anytone uses "gun deaths" as an excuse for gun control, please do me a favour and remove the suicides?

Suicide is not "gun violence".

Nearly 2/3rds of all gun deaths are suicide. For some reason those are conveniently not mentioned.

[Mormolyce]

I guess all that gun control sure helped out France. If we make guns illegal or enact gun control, that'll stop shootings, or so goes the logic.

Pssst, they brought those guns in from countries with poor gun control laws or lax enforcement, mostly in Eastern Europe. One came from Phoenix, Arizona :P

P.S. France has less than a third of the US's annual homicide rate, like most European countries.

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BTW, the next time anytone uses "gun deaths" as an excuse for gun control, please do me a favour and remove the suicides?

Suicide is not "gun violence".

Gun homicide rates DO exclude suicide. Otherwise they'd be even higher.

[mage21]

You brought up the Nice attacks where 87 people were killed by a truck driver -- I countered with Paris 2015 where 137 were killed by firearms.

So a truck or other non-gun item is incapable of surpassing that 137 number? A large homemade bomb (or several of them) can't match the killing power of a firearm? My argument isn't about trucks in particular, it is about the idea that if we were to restrict guns, these murderers would find some other way to inflict just as much damage through other means.

[Aehl]

Massive gun control laws worked in australia

LOL no they didnt. Thats a laugh...mate, lemme clue you in. The CRIMINALS have all the guns they want or need. There have been drive by shootings en masse, every time we hear about druggies or bikies, what we also hear is the number of illegal guns they had.

The police in Australia have stated that they can do NOTHING to stop the flow of illegal guns.

"What we have found is clear evidence provided by witnesses, including law enforcement agencies, that most guns used to commit a crime do not originate from licensed firearms owners but are in fact illegally imported

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/il...02-gr7ah4.html

A cache of illegal guns has been seized by state, federal and US authorities as part of an investigation to tackle an international weapons operation.

Repeat after me

"Gun laws and gun control affect only the law abiding, leaving them prey to well armed criminals"

[Endus]

BTW, the next time anytone uses "gun deaths" as an excuse for gun control, please do me a favour and remove the suicides?

Suicide is not "gun violence".

Self-directed violence is still violence.

Plus, if you look at the data, there's strong correlations; higher gun ownership rates lead to increased gun suicide rates, even though non-gun suicides don't change. Gun suicides are FAR more likely to be successful than other attempts. And so on.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazin.../guns-suicide/

I agree that it's best examined as two separate issues, but both tie in to a single relevant factor; gun ownership rates. It might not be "gun crime", but it's another major reason that high gun ownership rates aren't a positive trait.

[Independent voter]

Oldest victim is 72, youngest is 5.

*sigh*

[truckboattruck]

UK full of rapists and sex pests in government.
US full of mad idiots shooting down their own people.
eu countries being overran with immigration-related issues.

the west is failing, and falling.


[Infracted]

notice how this got infracted but not the "us is ok with shooting kids" comment above it
censorship is for the slow witted.

[Dextroden]

Pssst, they brought those guns in from countries with poor gun control laws or lax enforcement, mostly in Eastern Europe. One came from Phoenix, Arizona :P

P.S. France has less than a third of the US's annual homicide rate, like most European countries.

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Gun homicide rates DO exclude suicide. Otherwise they'd be even higher.

So what you mean is shootings will continue to happen because people can smuggle things in from Mexico and Canada if a strong federal law is consistently enforced?

[Celista]

I also haven't seen anything reliable that he was an atheist, either, especially after it was reported that he led Bible study classes.

If he shot a church, says something about being an atheist on his FB and was a bible study leader four years ago, it's possible that he became disillusioned with Christianity sometime over the past four years. Which might explain his actions.

Or he was an atheist and converted, and his Facebook profile is out of date. I've barely updated my "about me" section since 2008.

[wdh1974]

Shooter was ANTIFA, funded by George soros and supported by Hillary Clinton, this is the left wing radicals, this is what rules college campuses, heck most the people on this forum prolly support or have marched with ANTIFA..................ARe you cucks happy now? Did it work, did you get your overthrow of the government?