Mayan end-of-world rumors prompt Michigan officials to close 33 schools

[M0BSW]

We like most countries have nutters walking around, thankfully they don't seem to get there hands on assault rifles, I to don't understand  the fasination that some Americans have with guns. We personally won't go there for that very reason.

[MikeK]

The truth behind the Mayan apocalypse:

[Kremmen]

I do love this country, but our gun fetish bewilders me.

We like most countries have nutters walking around, thankfully they don't seem to get there hands on assault rifles, I to don't understand  the fasination that some Americans have with guns. We personally won't go there for that very reason.

Having visited US only once i am not qualified to speak other than saying that New York appeared a relatively sane place at the time. Also my acquaintances over there seem to be quite normal people.
Still, i do find the multitude on e.g. Discovery and similar TV channels of all kinds of gun related shows mildly disturbing. Especially the completely uncritical/uncaring attitude towards the implications of uncontrolled gun proliferation and use. Admittedly my home country is AFAIK #2 in the world for guns per capita, but the system here has almost nothing in common with US. I know this from experience because i happen to own several firearms myself, rifles, shotguns and handguns, both semiauto and revolvers. Here you need a police permit to buy any kind of firearm and nowadays you only get one after a personal interview to make sure you are not an outright psycho, and also only after you show a valid purpose, either for a legitimate sporting use or hunting. Buying a gun for home protection or anything like that is not a valid purpose. Here people are not supposed to shoot other people, period. Somehow that seems to make sense.
In recent years there have been a number of school shootings here too, unfortunately. These have caused a general change in attitude and far stricter controls in permits and gun storage and use. For example back in the day we were often shooting silhouettes in a sandpit next to a major highway. The police did stop to check our permits but i guess their real motivation was to compare hardware and ask to shoot a few rounds with us. Nowadays i'm sure a caper like that would get you thrown in jail and the key into a river. But i can't really find fault in that. The world today is a different place from what it was then.

In the US there seems still to be a tendency to view guns in a pioneer / wild west spirit even if those days are long gone. It is real hard to understand what the point is for the amendment where everyone can have all kinds of guns just as they please, in whatever numbers. They say it is to protect oneself from a malicious government or some such, but tell me how is that not utter bullshit? Surely they too have elections for that?
So, legitimate gun use may be OK, collecting may be OK but controlled so that sanity is preserved. That does not come across when watching Discovery...
Let's see if Obama manages to beat any sense into them. Not that any of this is my business of course.

[c4757p]

Let's see if Obama manages to beat any sense into them.

I'll let you know when I finish laughing.

[Kremmen]

Kinda proves my point, eh?

[WhyMe]

This is why our founding fathers created the second amendment

http://constitution.org/mil/tn/batathen.htm

It's to protect us from our own government.

[Razor512]

if it will give me a day off school or work (I work in a school), then I will join in on the end of the world panic and make it seem believable to

Nothing like getting an extra day added to your Christmas vacation

Hey I hear the sky is going to fall the day after the end of the Christmas vacation (while the person who told me it was very unintelligible and incoherent, it was immensely believable and I feel that school should also be closed on that day)

Also how do we know that the Mayan calendar isn't just running a little late and that it may happen 2 days after the end of Christmas vacation (the day after the day off due to the sky falling an thus having school closed the second day also)

[MikeK]

Also how do we know that the Mayan calendar isn't just running a little late and that it may happen 2 days after the end of Christmas vacation (the day after the day off due to the sky falling an thus having school closed the second day also)

The Mayans had precision stone tablets.

[Kremmen]

This is why our founding fathers created the second amendment

http://constitution.org/mil/tn/batathen.htm

It's to protect us from our own government.

Sorry to go on, but this is exactly my point: totally ass backwards. First let everything slide to hell in a handbasket, then and only then when the problems grow intolerable, break out the guns and throw bullets at the problem until it goes away. Pray what in the above example was the specific problem with the "government", that needed arming against? If i read correctly, the story was about some bullies who persisted despite the government that may have been ineffective, but was by no means the cause of the problem. Unless you count those bullies as _the_ government which i don't, in this case. Or did i get something wrong. It is not my place to tell how things should be run in the US and i don't really care, but even in this particular case the root cause is clear as daylight: the system of (s)electing officials needs rethinking. Election by popular vote, when the population is small and easily controlled by the bully boys, plus lack of oversight from a chain of command, if you will, is doomed to create this kind of problem.
If you by design have weapons to fight your local police precinct in case they perpetrate gross violations of the law of the land, i call it anarchy and kleptocracy, not democracy. Byt i guess the obvious alternative solution smacks of pinko commie subversion to some...

Again, sorry to be a bore and i'll shut up now.

[WhyMe]

Sorry to go on, but this is exactly my point: totally ass backwards. First let everything slide to hell in a handbasket, then and only then when the problems grow intolerable, break out the guns and throw bullets at the problem until it goes away. Pray what in the above example was the specific problem with the "government", that needed arming against? If i read correctly, the story was about some bullies who persisted despite the government that may have been ineffective, but was by no means the cause of the problem. Unless you count those bullies as _the_ government which i don't, in this case. Or did i get something wrong. It is not my place to tell how things should be run in the US and i don't really care, but even in this particular case the root cause is clear as daylight: the system of (s)electing officials needs rethinking. Election by popular vote, when the population is small and easily controlled by the bully boys, plus lack of oversight from a chain of command, if you will, is doomed to create this kind of problem.
If you by design have weapons to fight your local police precinct in case they perpetrate gross violations of the law of the land, i call it anarchy and kleptocracy, not democracy. Byt i guess the obvious alternative solution smacks of pinko commie subversion to some...

Again, sorry to be a bore and i'll shut up now.

Did you read it all? All this went on for years. They tried every means of getting the Federal government to stop the problem but were ignored by the Federal government. Then the local tyrant (who was the local government) brought in armed men to make sure that they could control the election the way they wanted. So instead of laying down and letting things happen they took action themselves. A mini revolution.

The system of choosing officials is OK until a tyrant comes in with violence, or the threat of violence to in order to become the governing body. Should we just let them do as they want? That is not Democracy to me. Every vote counts and everyone has one vote.

Don't know why you think we have guns to fight the police? Maybe because you see all the news reports about criminals using guns. Remember these are criminals with guns, not the majority of gun owners.

[ptricks]

the system of (s)electing officials needs rethinking. Election by popular vote, when the population is small and easily controlled by the bully boys, plus lack of oversight from a chain of command, if you will, is doomed to create this kind of problem.
If you by design have weapons to fight your local police precinct in case they perpetrate gross violations of the law of the land, i call it anarchy and kleptocracy, not democracy.

There is a lot of misinformation about the 2nd amendment. When the 2nd amendment was written the country was just being formed , there was not standing army, only farmers and civilians with guns. The people signing the documents that created the country were terrified of the way England politics worked at the time and wanted to prevent that from ever happening again. The idea was that the people would have the same level of defense as the government. If government and the people had the same level of defensive weapons then it would keep the government in check.
The problem with all of this is they couldn't foresee the advances in weaponry we have now, there is no way a citizen can have the kind of weapons the government currently uses, and there is the issue that needs solving, not by arming the citizens but by putting in stronger controls on politicians.

Americans over the decades have evolved into a society that has forgotten its founding. People vote every 4 years and then forget about politics for the next 4 years, saying things like "I voted, I did my part" , that will not work. Currently a politician can promise the world to voters, then after being elected can do anything they want on the issues and the only concern they have is if they get re-elected. Four years is too long to allow someone to do what they want, you can cause a lot of damage during that time. There needs to be new laws on politicians that put the check in power back in the hands of the citizens.

About the gun issue:
Have you ever seen a crime being committed ? If so how many do you see a year ? Police do not prevent crime, they can't as they have to be present when the crime is being committed. Police investigate crimes after the fact 99% of the time. In some areas , like where I live , it takes 30 minutes to get the police to your home from the time you call. I refuse to wait 30 minutes for someone to show up when I need help from someone breaking in to my home at night.  Something nobody wants to talk about is also the gender issue , where are the women who do mass shootings ? Why is it only men ?
I do think there is a link here caused by the media, music and video games. Kids that play shooting games all day long and then make comments like 'I shot him in the head, LOL' , while it is just a game, that does effect their perception of reality as a whole. Read some of the books by this guy, he worked for the US DOD and did studies on how to change a persons viewpoint on performing certain task like killing.
http://www.bfskinner.org/bfskinner/Home.html

[Bored@Work]

I do think there is a link here caused by the media, music and video games. Kids that play shooting games all day long and then make comments like 'I shot him in the head, LOL' , while it is just a game, that does effect their perception of reality as a whole. Read some of the books by this guy,

There are a lot of theories out there about what is going wrong. We also have an increase in excessive violence from young men. Fortunately they have no easy access to guns.

The most common theory is lack of guidance / role models from proper adult males during early education, e.g. the father, uncles, teachers. It is not uncommon that mail children are educated only by women for the first ten, 15 years of their life. By the mother, by female teachers in kindergarden, primary school and the lower classes in secondary school. Which in turn is related to an over-reaction of society. A male working with small children? Must be a pedophile.

A second theory related to the first one is that excessive violence by young men increases because of the lack of directly experienced violence in childhood. This sounds crazy, but the argument goes like this: The all-female education environment works very hard to prevent what was once typical among young boys, some pushing and shoving here, a bit of a brawl there. No teacher used to care about this in the old days. The result of that violence among boys was that they learned how it feels to get hurt, and it doesn't feel great. This created empathy for victims of violence, not LOLs. It created an honor code - no objects (no sticks, no stones) and stop beating someone when he is down. Notorious rowdies were shunned, not seen as role models.

These times are gone, and when young men get violent these days it typically gets excessive and the don't know any bounds.

So some of the many things that need to change is we need to get more males into early education.  The right kind of males, not the metrosexual kind who more behave like women than men. We need to allow boys to play rough games and have the occasional brawl. And we need to stamp out 100 other things, too. Like that it is cool to be stupid.

[Kremmen]

Did you read it all? All this went on for years. They tried every means of getting the Federal government to stop the problem but were ignored by the Federal government. Then the local tyrant (who was the local government) brought in armed men to make sure that they could control the election the way they wanted. So instead of laying down and letting things happen they took action themselves. A mini revolution.

Yes, yes. I'm not saying there was no problem. I do understand what the problem was and how it was solved. What i am saying is that that kind of problem should have been solved at least like a century or two earlier, by creating a totally different system in the first place.
If you feel like it, you may find it illuminating to check the story against a list of warning signs ("Indicators of a failed state") listed in the Failed States Index: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Failed_States_Index. Those indicators predict problems like described here. The solution of none of those however is to arm the population because they are deep rooted social issues in need of political solutions over a long period of time.
Also, i think what you write is begging the more direct question; the local tyrant brought armed men. So at least those guns were not used to fight corrupt government, but to enable it.

The system of choosing officials is OK until a tyrant comes in with violence, or the threat of violence to in order to become the governing body. Should we just let them do as they want? That is not Democracy to me. Every vote counts and everyone has one vote.

No, of course you don't let such people do whatever they want. Indeed that is not democracy, but the alternative presented in the story is not true democracy either, but basically mob rule, however noble the purpose, and however good (incidentally) the end result. Neither the problem nor the solution should have arisen in the first place, and under proper government it would not have. So yes, the government process can be said to have failed but the solution should be to improve government, not buy more guns.

Don't know why you think we have guns to fight the police? Maybe because you see all the news reports about criminals using guns. Remember these are criminals with guns, not the majority of gun owners.

These sheriffs were the police, right? So i meant this specific case, not US or police in general. And yes, my view of the US must certainly be colored based on the news coverage but i try to use some filtering against that. I'm sure it is not generally as bad as the sensation seeking reports would have you believe..
Please remember that i am also a gun owner so not anti-gun in principle. But i have no problem in accepting strict controls if it means i can walk without fear through any part of any city in my home country at any time of the day. As i can. I do understand the arguments for unlimited right to bear arms, i just disagree with a lot of them.

[Kremmen]

The most common theory is lack of guidance / role models from proper adult males during early education, e.g. the father, uncles, teachers. It is not uncommon that mail children are educated only by women for the first ten, 15 years of their life. By the mother, by female teachers in kindergarden, primary school and the lower classes in secondary school. Which in turn is related to an over-reaction of society. A male working with small children? Must be a pedophile.

A second theory related to the first one is that excessive violence by young men increases because of the lack of directly experienced violence in childhood. This sounds crazy, but the argument goes like this: The all-female education environment works very hard to prevent what was once typical among young boys, some pushing and shoving here, a bit of a brawl there. No teacher used to care about this in the old days. The result of that violence among boys was that they learned how it feels to get hurt, and it doesn't feel great. This created empathy for victims of violence, not LOLs. It created an honor code - no objects (no sticks, no stones) and stop beating someone when he is down. Notorious rowdies were shunned, not seen as role models.

These times are gone, and when young men get violent these days it typically gets excessive and the don't know any bounds.

So some of the many things that need to change is we need to get more males into early education.  The right kind of males, not the metrosexual kind who more behave like women than men. We need to allow boys to play rough games and have the occasional brawl. And we need to stamp out 100 other things, too. Like that it is cool to be stupid.

This is something that has been discussed in the more serious media here as well. They and i tend to agree. For that reason among others, in my opinion it is a good thing that we have mandatory armed service for all males and voluntary service for females. I did it at the time and was no worse for it, and you could say better. While the service in peacetime Finnish army is not really arduous, it is quite real. You get to operate all of the military hardware, heavy weaponry included, and you learn to be a part of the machine, in good and bad. But mostly you learn the discipline (self-discipline included) and being a member of a group with clear code of conduct. All of this seems to fulfill some need in a young man's psyche, that then tends to result in less problems of this kind later in life.

[Kremmen]

About the gun issue:
Have you ever seen a crime being committed ? If so how many do you see a year ? Police do not prevent crime, they can't as they have to be present when the crime is being committed. Police investigate crimes after the fact 99% of the time. In some areas , like where I live , it takes 30 minutes to get the police to your home from the time you call. I refuse to wait 30 minutes for someone to show up when I need help from someone breaking in to my home at night.

Actually yes, several. Including one with live gunfire betwen the perps and police less than 100m distant. Admittedly, this was in Italy because i don't think the Finnish police return fire in public streets with innocent bystanders present. To be precise, i cannot say whether the armed carabinieri actually fired at the criminals, but those surely did fire in our direction. The other cases were simple street and store robberies, no actual violence involved.
I agree that police is present normally after the fact. That brings up the sensitive question about self defense and to what extent it is justified. Some legal systems take the view that anything you do to defend your property and life is automatically justified. Then there is the view that the response must be proportional to the threat. That is the way it is done here. There have been a few cases of justified homicide in extreme self defense cases, where the defender walked. Generally however, just shooting a burglar is guaranteed to get you a jail sentence for murder. No system is perfect, but i'll take ours. There may be the additional factor that armed burglary is to all practical purposes nonexistent here. The law and order machine here is efficient enough to make that a nonviable proposition in the long run, so there are not many takers. The few cases we have had tend to be import jobs done by low IQ torpedos that get cleaned away rather quickly.

Something nobody wants to talk about is also the gender issue , where are the women who do mass shootings ? Why is it only men ?

The innate need of young men to blow off excess testosterone/adrenaline gone wrong? Difference in deep psychology (nurturer vs hunter)? I fully support equal rights for women in all walks of life, but at the same time i'm sure there are basic differences beyond the obvious physical ones. See my previous post

I do think there is a link here caused by the media, music and video games. Kids that play shooting games all day long and then make comments like 'I shot him in the head, LOL' , while it is just a game, that does effect their perception of reality as a whole. Read some of the books by this guy, he worked for the US DOD and did studies on how to change a persons viewpoint on performing certain task like killing.
http://www.bfskinner.org/bfskinner/Home.html

Yes that is what many say. How real it is i don't know (didn't read the link yet).

[G7PSK]

What seems to be forgotten here, is the bad guy always shoots first. That means that unless he is extremely lucky and the bad guy is a very bad and a slow shot the good guy is the first to go down and if the bad guy knows you are likely to have a gun he is far more likely to shoot in the first place. Contrary to popular belief special forces like the SAS and SBS are trained to avoid gunfire if at all possible and if forced to shoot to shoot first as there is unlikely to be a second chance. As for giving six year old kids a gun, after playing cowboys and Indians or cops and robbers there is unlikely to be any around after the first few minuets for a nutter to murder.

[EEVblog]

Americans over the decades have evolved into a society that has forgotten its founding. People vote every 4 years and then forget about politics for the next 4 years, saying things like "I voted, I did my part" , that will not work. Currently a politician can promise the world to voters, then after being elected can do anything they want on the issues and the only concern they have is if they get re-elected. Four years is too long to allow someone to do what they want, you can cause a lot of damage during that time. There needs to be new laws on politicians that put the check in power back in the hands of the citizens.

Yes, and the solution is easy. Remove money from politics. All of it. And make it a federal crime.
Any sniff of government corruption, and both perpetrators go to jail.

I'm also a big fan of mandating that a certain percentage of laws introduced by the government have to be long term, that come into effect (or show effects) after their term in office.

Dave.

[WhyMe]

These sheriffs were the police, right? So i meant this specific case, not US or police in general. And yes, my view of the US must certainly be colored based on the news coverage but i try to use some filtering against that. I'm sure it is not generally as bad as the sensation seeking reports would have you believe..
Please remember that i am also a gun owner so not anti-gun in principle. But i have no problem in accepting strict controls if it means i can walk without fear through any part of any city in my home country at any time of the day. As i can. I do understand the arguments for unlimited right to bear arms, i just disagree with a lot of them.

Well did you notice that the Sheriff had to be elected to fill the office? A Sheriff has to run for the office and be elected. He is a elected official, he is a government man. He doesn't ride around in a car, make rounds, or respond to police calls. He's basically the head honcho that makes decisions for all the officers below him and he spends the taxpayers money in the way that is fair and right. He was abusing his position and using taxpayers money wrongly. And this elected official was refusing our right to observe the counting of the votes. He was actually stuffing the ballot box in his favor with his hand picked armed officers making sure no one saw what he was doing or interfered. They tried every way they could to stop this man but received no help from the State or Federal Government. They saw no other way to get justice except through violence. When people are pushed too far things like this happen.

I don't know about other states laws on gun control. But I have to go through a background check every time I buy a long gun. I had to go through an extensive background check and have 6 references to get my pistol permit. It took over 6 months for them to complete the background check and my references. Criminals just get the guns on the streets. We shouldn't be controlling the guns....... we should be controlling the criminals.

[AlfBaz]

...we should be controlling the criminals.

Therein lies the problem... once they're criminals its too late

[Razor512]

To start off, illegal drugs are illegal but in America, over 22 million people take illegal drugs.
Illegal drugs have been banned and the government spends over 200 billion dollars a year on just enforcing the ban (then there is the cost of housing the people in cages who they arrest at a cost of around 100,000 dollars a year per prisoner)
The war on drugs has been going on since the early 1970's and today we still have 22 million people using them.

In the 1920's alcohol was banned, and that ban gave rise to gangsters and did nothing to stop alcohol use, instead it lead to mass killings of innocent people who happened to get in the crossfire of rival gangs fighting over turf to sell alcohol.

Banning guns will not work. While it will make it a little harder for criminals to get guns, it will make it impossible for law abiding people to get them. That will only increase crime as it will lower the opportunity cost of doing a crime since they are no longer weighing the possibility of losing their life as much.



Not many things deter a criminal like knowing that their potential victims are able to defend them self.

Look at every single one of these mass murders, they have all taken place in a gun free zone. If you plan to kill a bunch of people, you will be most successful at completing the goal if you can ensure that you wont be stopped or killed before reaching the goal and the best location for that are gun free zones because you can be sure that the law abiding citizens will follow that sign and possibly believe that the sign will protect them.

 I would love for all of the guns to disappear as while it wont stop crazy people, it will make it much harder for them to kill people (guns are the most efficient killing tools)

Currently the fact is that even if the government were to take the major action of banning all guns, it would not stop criminals from getting guns.  (did you know that cocaine, heroin and many other drugs in this class are illegal and banned by the government, and they have been banned for many decades? With that understanding in mind, why is it that there are at least 3 people that I know of in my neighborhood alone that sell the stuff? Why do many statistics show over 22 million Americans taking illegal drugs?

A signed document does not have magical powers, just because someone makes a law banning something does not make it magically disappear.

furthermore when you make an entire country a gun free zone (eg the UK), you get the highest violent crime rate on the planet.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1196941/The-violent-country-Europe-Britain-worse-South-Africa-U-S.html










PS there has never been a single report or statistic showing reduced violence in gun free zones, there are only cases of criminals overwhelmingly choosing gun free zones for their crimes and many interviewed criminals will use the reasoning of the victims not being able to defend them self.


if you cant get the weapons out of the hands of the criminals then all stronger laws will do will shift the balance of weapons further into the hands of the criminals .

The solution to reducing these crimes is simple, just get rid of the gun free zone status, that way criminals will lose the guarantee that their victims will not be able to defend them self and thus discourage crime in those locations.

PS in the theater shooting, there were at least 5 closer theaters and a bunch others further away, the only unique thing about all of the nearby theater that the killer chose, was that the theater he picked was a gun free zone while the others were not.

(I am not mandating that people get guns, I just want people who legally have them and have proven them self through education and training to be allowed to have their guns with them)

If you plan to break the law dealing with murder, a piddly gun free zone law will not stop you.

PS less than 1/10th of 1% of registered gun owners, use their guns to commit crimes

Also no gun control law will reduce guns more than outright banning them, but even then it will not stop them like I have mentioned before, it did not work with drugs (even with the trillion dollar drug war), it has not worked in countries where guns are banned, and at most it will make it harder for criminals to get a gun, but impossible for law abiding citizens to get a gun.

Furthermore, any ban that reduces law abiding citizens abilities to have a weapon but not the criminals to the same extent will increase crime.

if the criminal cant for any reason get a gun, they would get a knife (eg the school stabbing in china)
and no one stopped that person.

The hijacked planes on 9/11 were hijacked by 1 or 2 people with knives. the TSA did not allow anyone to have weapons so when 2 criminals managed to sneak a weapon onboard, the balance of power shifted in their favor and they managed to do what they wanted without worrying about hundreds of other people stopping them.

Getting rid of guns even if it were possible will not magically prevent these horrible outcomes, if you ban all weapons  then a criminal with any weapon that gives him or her a more offensive power will be able to commit crimes without worrying about being stopped.
(thats why many people call guns the great equalizer. Guns exist and you cant undo that so the most you can do is allow law abiding people to level the field in relation to criminals with those weapons.

If guns had not been invented yet, you would see these situations and cries for knife control flooding the news.


Even the UK one of the strictest forms of gun control (the banned them all, and furthermore their landmass is an island where they have more control over what comes in and out), they are having a hard time dealing with gun crime, and unlike the US, in the UK, the guns are mainly in the hands of various gangs.

eg
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1223193/Culture-violence-Gun-crime-goes-89-decade.html

[G7PSK]

Contrary to belief guns are not totally banned in the UK. Self loading shotguns that hold more than 3 rounds  have to be held on a firearms certificate rather than a shotgun certificate, rifles can be had as well on a firearms cert. you cannot have self loading rifles of the military type as they are section one ( if you hold a dealers ticket you can, but can't sell them to a British citizen) Hand guns are banned but aren't in reality, you can have a black powder hand gun of any type as long as you have a firearms certificate for them and an explosives licence for the black powder, you can get around the explosives licence by using black powder substitute which is a propellant rather than an explosive, a hand gun can also be held if you are a deer stalker in order to put down a wounded deer ( what is wrong with the rifle in your hands) they are also available to slaughter-men and vets as well.
Most illegal weapons come in from eastern Europe as the EU wont allow us to have boarder controls between states in Europe, so it is easy to put weapons into your car drive to the tunnel and get into the UK with them.   

[WhyMe]

http://youtu.be/Ooa98FHuaU0

[tom66]

Insightful video, but he fails to specify the % of that murder figure due to guns.
One figure I could find quickly was 9,369 murders directly attributable due to guns in the US.
That is more than half of the murder figure.

Whereas in the UK we have a lower murder figure, and less than 1% attributable to guns.