I heard about this on the radio today. Unbelievable. And so utterly horrible. I heard the guvernor said it was an employee that was unhappy with the channel. But that wasn't the fault of that poor reporter and camera man? I don't get that logic. 

And, yeah, I agree guns are far too easily accessable in the US. Just now the police in Norway are allowed to carry guns on their regular day job, and it scares me a bit. More guns leads to more violence. Armed police force can easily escalate the situation. Then again, the criminals have probably escalated it already by themselves.

What a sad and troubling news, tonnaree! I hope and pray that some day insight will prevail.

That is so sad! I don't understand why anyone would think that was an appropriate way to voice their anger.  They were just two people doing their job! 

As far as guns in the US: I would agree, that guns should be kept track of just like people who own and/or drive cars.  Cars can be weapons too and yet for some reason more people make a fuss about gun registering and licensing than they do for cars.  If you don't want guns to be illegal and you are a proud gun owner, why do you care if the government knows you have one? If you aren't planning on killing people, why should you care that the government knows you own a gun? And I've read that if guns are registered than they can sometimes use that to figure out whose gun was used in a crime, and if the owner did it, which I don't think is a bad thing (although if it's a stolen gun I guess they'd still need evidence that it wasn't the owner who was the killer, but at least they have a way of getting information).

But gun control debate aside, this is still a very sad story of people who were killed for no good reason.

nakahara wrote:

tonnaree wrote:

I agree with you 100% but so many people in the US lose all logic when talking about gun control.

 

I mean no offence, but I think there´s a heavy indoctrination in the US in favour of guns and their availability. The about mentioned mantra "guns don´t kill people, people kill people" is a most notorious example of this and as any propagandist piece, it´s shoved down people´s throats for such a long time, that they´ll simply accept it at the end without thinking twice about it - since for them it´s already an apparent truth that doesn´t need proofs. (And somebody´s getting quite rich from selling and spreading those instruments of death - in the US but also abroad.)

Add to this an attractive and excessive, flattering portrayals of gun violence in our today´s media and film and their underlying message that you can solve anything by starting fire on others ....and it´s just a question of time when such atrocity happens.

So sorry for the lives innocently lost - but with such attitude it won´t change in near future. No poor victim is going to change the system where oligarchic money are involved.
 

No offense what so ever.  I agree with you and I HATE it!

I am sorry for everyone who were affected by this, how awful. 

Guns scare me so much. I live in a country where firearms are illegal (unless you have a strict purpose, and even then there are many laws on how to handle and store them). 
Still there are guns going around in the criminal world and there has been gun violence here too. But never on the scale seen in the US. 

I am a firm believer that "Guns don't kill people, people kill people" but the liberal gun laws just make it so much easier to pull the trigger before you think. 

I once heard an American commedian say that they should make bullets really, really expensive; that way you were forced to rethink your decision; if you'd really want to spend that much money on gunning someone down. 

 

tonnaree wrote:

Sorry to ramble on but this issue is very frsutrating and upsetting to me.  It makes me ashamed of my country which, in the eyes of the ultra conservatives, makes me a bad person.

Well, they are them and you are you. You must act according to your own conscience, not according to their dogmas.

Great American literary hero, Huckleberry Finn, was indoctrinated too that he would end up in hell if he´ll help escaped black slaves - yet when things came to pass, he still decided to rather end up in eternal flames, than to betray his black friend Jim.
 

Davina, I have grown up with the gun culture and I still agree with every word you said.  I have realtives who would probaly give up a limb before they gave up a gun.   It frightens and saddens me.

And here the key word is 'culture'. The American fascination and adoration of guns and weaponry is a cultural phenomenon and cultural issue. Canadians have many guns but the culture 'North of the border' is very different. I only know one person with a gun, and he is a farmer. No one I know would feel deprived without a. Gun smoke because they do not have one,  no one feels vulnerable or loan to be targeted without one. Clearly in some areas where gun culture reigns things are different but generally this is not the case here.