‘I have a problem with people who want to hurt other people’

Written by

M.G. Siegler:

I have no problem if someone wants to hurt themselves. I have a problem with people who want to hurt other people. My right to extend my arm ends at your face.


  • Brian B.

    The fundamental problem I have with MG’s reasoning is the mindset of ‘guns are the only thing that could’ve caused this damage’.

    This nutjob could’ve lobbed a few cheaply made pipe bombs into the theater to the same effect. The nutjob was getting his doctorate in neuroscience and had been planning this for months. This wasn’t an impulse kill. He was smart, psychotic, and patient and that’s a really hard combo to outwit when you’re trying to protect the innocent.

    • imthedude

      Yeah, except things go wrong with bombs. They go off when you make them, they don’t go off sometimes when they’re supposed to. Pointing a gun and shooting point blank is pretty effective, every time. The fact remains this guy was able to buy 4 guns in 2 months, one being a goddamn machine gun.

      Then the guy had a 100 round magazine for it. I’m sorry, but there’s no reason to have that. I’d bet the 100 round mag is not standard issue in the military, otherwise guys would spray and pray. If it takes you 100 rounds to kill a deer, it’s time to choose a different pass time. Like shooting bottles in your back yard, I doubt you’re rattling off 100 bullets and better yet can’t take a few seconds to pop a new magazine in.

      What if home depot sold sticks of dynamite? Why make someone need a federal license to buy heavy explosives? Maybe they like blowing up stuff for fun, or want to get rid of a gopher. Probably because they could also be pissed at an employer, and bring down a building. Would you argue, “Meh, they could have just made dynamite instead of buying it.”?

      Look beyond this, down the street in fact. The two knobs in Colorado were not PhD students, and they managed to unleash a whole lot of hell with butter knives. Oh wait, it was guns, again. I’m not saying people shouldn’t have guns, but it’s way too easy to get them. I shouldn’t be able to walk into REI and walk out with an arsenal. It needs to be a hell of a lot more regulated.

      • Brian B.

        It is regulated. It can’t catch a psycho with no priors. We’re not to the point of precogs and Minority Report yet.

        Things also go wrong with guns. Holmes’ gun jammed or he could’ve killed more. A guy smart enough to get a doctorate in neuroscience could probably figure out how to make reliable pipe bombs over the course of a few months.

        The Columbine kids obtained their guns illegally.

        Just say what you’re really thinking: all guns should be outlawed. Would the banning of guns prevent sociopaths from murdering? Would they turn from random violence to targeted violence?

  • pawhite524

    My heartfelt sorrow for those who lost loved ones at the hands of a psychotic, rage killer. Again, as with Columbine, there were people who knew something ugly and likely deadly was brewing in this man’s head before this horror took place yet it occurred despite this fore-knowledge. As a society and a culture we are so quick to blame someone or something and that becomes the celebrated cause. MG Siegler and Roger Ebert want to blame guns and gun laws. There are approximately 200 million guns and, I’m told, many hundreds if not thousands of gun laws in the U.S. When a fatal car accident occurs you don’t hear people, in knee jerk fashion, yelling, “Those dang horseless carriages!” or “If politicians didn’t fund roads and highways there wouldn’t be this problem. It’s that dang asphalt lobby!” This is a tragedy which likely could have been avoided if someone had done something. Perhaps a family member knew; unless he was getting PhD in Neuroscience on-line a professor or fellow student or a neighbor would perceive something was wrong. This level of psychopathology and his delusional state are not easily masked. This man was not an ideological assassin nor a hit-man where silence of purpose is essential. My point is this- let’s look at all of the possible explanations for this sadness and address them rather than trot out the convenient knee-jerk reactions. My point is to look for solutions not to place blame on the usual suspects as though this blame alone fixes the problem.

    • Buckeyestar

      Terrible analogy. Cars aren’t designed for the sole purpose of wounding or killing. Guns are.

      • pawhite524

        From my whole comment you can only comment on the analogy? And your incredibly narrow view of guns being solely designed for wounding or killing? Then why aren’t the killings and woundings from the handguns, rifles, and shotguns used in the Olympics reported? Winter games- Biathlon; Summer Games- Skeet shooting, free pistol, rifle. Are the deaths and woundings from competitors’ firearms being concealed? Shooting sports have been with us forever and they are fun and if there were killings and woundings I am sure we’d hear about it. The point of my comment is very clear if you read more than my analogy. And despite the fact cars are not “designed for the sole purpose of killing” cars are the means by which tens of thousands of people die each year and hundreds of thousands are injured but we as a society blame the driver. When a psychotic and deranged man kills and wounds people with a gun we blame the means by which the unfortunate souls met their premature demise. Please come to your senses and look for how this man accomplished this in full view of others over a period of several months. This is a more worthy path to preventing future tragedies of this nature than finding deficiencies in analogies.

      • pawhite524

        My reply is in the column thread for this subject.  All the best!

  • No

    ratio of gun stores in America to McDonalds is 9:1.

    • pawhite524

      You are either an incredibly gullible fool (who was told this nonsense) or an illiterate who can’t read the Yellow Pages. My checking the Phoenix AZ YP reveals more MacDonald’s than gun stores. Same for New York City. Oops, same for Boston.

  • No

    In 2011, 1 UK police officer was murdered (none in 2010). In the USA, 72.

    may be criminals in UK need to start using pipe bombs because guns aren’t available to them in order to catch up to the US.

  • sloanie

    I need some context. How many police officers are there in the UK vs. the US?