http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/09/justice/texas-college-stabbing/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

(CNN) -- At least 14 people were injured in a stabbing incident Tuesday morning at Lone Star College's CyFair campus in the Houston area, officials said.
Authorities have detained one suspect at the campus in Cypress, Texas -- so far the only suspect at this point, a sheriff's spokesman told reporters Tuesday afternoon.
Student Maya Khalil, 19, was in class in the campus' health sciences building when the incident happened, she said. She managed to take photos of the chaotic scene as it unfolded.
"It was really scary," Khalil said.
Authorities released different accounts of how many people were wounded.
Robert Rasa, a spokesman for the CyFair Volunteer Fire Department, said 15 people were hurt. Sheriff's officials said 14 people were wounded.
The school was on lockdown Tuesday afternoon while authorities combed the campus to ensure no other injured people or attackers were there, Harris County sheriff's spokesman Alan Bernstein said.
Marianna Sviland, a teacher at the college, told CNN at 2 p.m. (3 p.m. ET) that students and staff were being allowed to leave campus.
Bernstein said it wasn't clear whether all of the injured people were stabbed.
"It's possible other people were running away" and became injured that way, he said.
Four people were taken to a hospital by helicopter, authorities said. The conditions of the victims weren't immediately available.
The four flown to a hospital "were in a dire enough situation that they were taken out on helicopters," Bernstein said.
Bernstein said it will take time for authorities to go through the campus and "make sure there (is) not another suspect or suspects."
"I do believe the confrontation was limited to a few (classrooms) or just one classroom -- not anybody roaming around and getting into a large number of areas," Bernstein said.
Details about what led to the incident weren't immediately released.
"Stay away from the area. Seek shelter in a secure location until the incident is resolved," the school posted on its website.
Tuesday's incident comes more than two months after three people were wounded in a shooting at a different Lone Star College campus -- the North Harris campus in Houston.

People who want to carry guns, do it because it makes them feel powerful. It's because they want to be able to pull out their gun at any kind of situation in which they imagine themselves threatened. It's the weak people who feel a need to carry a gun, or else a criminal who wants to use the gun to make personal gains at someone else's expense.

Do you own a gun? If not, how can you say that about people who carry guns? Let's not assume my friend. 

Either ways, it's better for government to take guns away from the hands of civilians. Just like US is currently being the world government by trying to take nukes away from all tom, dick and harry states of the world.  

"inflicting damage is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when the damage is inflicted on a bad person."

That is the kind of attitude from a gun totting individual that puts everyone at risk. The gun holder gets to decide who is the bad person. Who is bad person is a very relative term, yet the gun holder gets to end the life of who he deems is bad at an instant of power play. Who is bad, a poor kid who steals a chewing gum from a grocery store? A black man who is walking with hood and just because he is black, others deem him a potential risk so they shoot him for defense from potential crime?

This is exactly the reason why it is dangerous to get guns in the hands of civilians.

The weapons of mass destruction were brought into the argument just to show you that according to your definition every weapon is for defense, and not for offense. So let me ask you something. What is an offensive weapon in your opinion? or does that not even exist?

The point is that these weapons get used erratically at the whim of the owners and innocent people die. That could be prevented by preventing civilians from owning guns. Even the atom bomb was used erratically killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. You cannot justify such killings without justifying genocide, which I hope you don't.

As far as gun control. Any good practice can start now and then we can look forward to a better future. Just because HIV was incurable, if people stopped looking for a cure, the there would be no hope for the future generations or the ones affected. You can always start at a point and move on from there. Laws can always be made asking civilians to return guns in possession and levy huge fines if anyone is caught with it. I mean it is not as far fetched as Cyprus government taking money from common citizen's account because that's what they needed to do.

I don't own a gun because I am not afraid that someone is going to come after me and I will need to shoot them. I learn to co-exist with society and have positive experience with everyone in general so there is no need to make a pre-emptive strike on the sanity of those that come into my contact by needing to carry a weapon for protection. However, if you are a first class ass hole then you should probably be carrying a gun because others will be coming after yo ass.

 At the same time, these are also the news happening right now.

www.cnn.com/2013/04/09/us/new-jersey-child-shooting/index.html

www.cnn.com/2013/04/09/us/tennessee-gun-death/index.html

you guys are not getting point here..
had it been automatic gun, at least 20 people would have been dead in less than a minute..
it's knife, people got injured only..
there is no comparison betn guns and knives

so kiddo, are you sarcastically conveying that you're against gun banning? 

....
that stabber must be on meth or some sort of drugs anyway, 
when on drugs, they kill their own, let alone others..

Rethink, Bittertruth, et all:


We have a fundamental difference on understanding things. I am not saying my way is right, it's just that you aren't seeing the thing I am trying to say here...and it might go in my side as well, of course.

If it was up to me, sure, I would never ever let the human kind invent any guns or nuclear war heads. But we have to talk about matter of practicality, even if you completely ban guns, you know that won't happen. Prohibition has never worked and it will never work. Drugs are still illegal in most of the countries, why then do we have such a huge problem with drug usage and smuggling? You take away the source of drugs (or guns) and people will synthesize crystal meth in their own basement.You take away guns, illegal guns will pop up from other countries, this will never stop. It actually will create a black market, and you know what's going to happen; criminals will be the only one with access to guns. Besides, the issue with over 300M guns in existence in the continental US, that's not a small issue.

You say, we have to start somewhere. You compared it to giving up with AIDS cure. I am trying to tell you that it is not even comparable. It's not about achieving an improbable, it's about not wasting time on impossible. And given the present socio-political climate of the world, this task is impossible. Not only it is impossible, it's You try to stop gun sales, it will come up even bigger- that's the power of criminal incentives.

The issue I have with these ban-the-gun group is that they are channelling their focus on wrong target. They come up with numbers to show that US has significantly high gun violence as oppose to countries like UK where handguns are prohibited. But they miss the point that it's not just prohibition of gun that did it. If that were the case, why does Switzerland has one of the lowest case of gun violence while they rank third in the world for highest number of guns per citizen.

So what's the issue they should focus on? I have theories but they are merely theories: May be it's a social thing than legal thing, maybe focusing less on dramatic coverage of such violence would help? Point is, we should shift our focus towards understanding this issue better, do more research. One thing I know for sure-through statistics-is that banning the gun (or even assault weapon) is not going to cut it.

Adding some more munition to the discussion: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-aides-bipartisan-deal-reached-on-gun-background-checks/2013/04/10/fa4fe9a6-a1db-11e2-be47-b44febada3a8_story.html?hpid=z1

I support gun control laws and background checks, as long as we realize that we are attending the symptoms only. A good study needs to be done to come up with the actual solution.

Kiddo, do you support ban on assault weapons and  high-capacity magazines? 

Wait for another 100 years or less, nuclear weapons will probably be made smaller perhaps the size of our finger. And the launchers will be the size of a pencil box. Perhaps then everyone will instead be owning a nuclear weapon instead of a gun. The argument will be the same. A massacre happened in Australia ages ago known as the port Arthur massacre. Since then it has not happened because the government took action to ban such weapons. One can fight a knife wielding madman but with a gun wielding psycho there is no chance. Whereas most people who own guns (like kiddo) are decent and responsible human beings, but the psychos are also a handful. As the world gets more materialistic, the percentage of these psychos are ever increasing. Mental health problems are increasing. This is not a sane world out here. Majority of the people do not know how to forgive and forget. Majority of humans are driven by revenge. They are driven by greed. This is what makes the world a dangerous place. If you believe a knife is dangerous than why add a gun to these dangerous resources that human can make use to kill?. The lesser these resources the better isn't it. We already have enough to kill. Knives, hammer, Chainsaw, poisons, etc. Anyways death is a guarantee, everyone will die someday. Good people, bad people. There is no need to kill. A gun will make more sense in the immortal world of the future when perhaps you can reason out that you need to kill a certain individual because he gives you the shits and you cannot stand him being immortal anymore. :)

Alternate
I support conducting more non-partisan study on this than blindly banning things. When I said blindly banning, I mean it. The definition of assault weapon is a farce. This is a politically generated term to quench the outcry of anti-gun lobbyists.
See the link below:
http://www.assaultweapon.info/
It's a really well put together presentation, you will enjoy it and will be enlightened at the same time.

Having said that, heck I'd love to see no automatic or semi-automatic guns anywhere. I just am not sure how feasible it is to do that.

@Fredom, please give my last post a read; and if you still don't agree with anything, let's discuss.

Kiddo,

I am aware of the actual definition and differences of the term “assault weapons.”  My understanding is that the term is widely used to refer to semi-automatic weapons which are not truly assault weapons.

There have been innumerable studies but it is difficult to get to a consensus as people are divided not only on the effects of gun control legislation but also on the issue of constitutional infringement of second amendment. Be that as it may, there need to be some reasonable restriction on gun sales considering the number of ruthless massacres attributable to gun violence.Rightly so, in my opinion, the current legislation is directed against both automatic and semi-automatic guns with detachable cartridges at the same time allowing other guns that people can use for hunting or defending themselves. Furthermore, it also enforces rigorous background check of a buyer.

Mostly the argument against gun control is rebutted by a statement “guns don’t kill people, people do.” I believe your opening post about the guy going on stabbing rampage embracing the same argument. It is false equivalency as the outcome would have been totally different if the guy had used a gun – assault or otherwise.  

@kiddo, you seem to be saying that guns are a necessary evil. You do admit they are evil. You compare guns to drugs and say drugs are still available despite being illegal. People do go to jail and get fined and in some countries like Singapore, they get the death penalty for possessing drugs. Imagine if drugs were legal, we would have worse problems to deal with. So the issue is not about making a utopia out here, but making less evil. Banning guns will not get rid of the problems a society faces, but it will make them less. It will lessen the chances of school kids being massacred. It will lessen the chances of movie goers being massacred. So the purpose is to LESSEN the problems. You said there are millions of guns in USA and making it illegal will increase this amount, not lessen it. I disagree. Whereas you are right making it illegal many people will still get guns via illegal channels, but the amount that is out there will DECREASE. If there are millions now, there will be thousands after the ban. It will lessen the problem, not get rid of it. I do not understand where you get your argument that it will INCREASE the amount of weapons out there. Making drugs illegal has lessened the problem of drugs. There are lesser drugs out there. With due respect to gun lovers, personally I think a gun is a negative thought. Your mind when it thinks of owning a gun thinks of the negative aspect of life. Thus you are feeding something that is negative. See you do admit it is evil and you are feeding it instead of letting go. Whereas your concerns might be valid, your reaction to it could be different and still be proper.

I keep those paragraphs but it is not showing in the text. Hmmmmmm

"guns don't kill, people do." Gun lovers use this a lot but actually this is the very reason why guns should be banned. Humans kill!. Guns are like badhar ko haath mah nariwal. :)

A gun become a dangerous toy in the hands of human beings because their emotions fluctuate all the time and you never know when they snap. That is the reason we hear about so many people who snap and kill innocent people including kids. If they did not have easy access to guns they would not be able to go on a killing spree.

Those people who went on killing spree, how many times do you think they used their guns to defend themselves?

I wonder if we did a survey of 100 people owning guns, how many times have they used their guns to defend themselves?

 This just in http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/us/senate-votes-to-allow-debate-on-gun-bill.html?hp&_r=0

Come to think of it. If there was any statistics about how many times guns were used for offensive purpose versus how many times they were used for defensive purpose, I think it would tilt heavily to the side of offensive use. So the defense theory just doesn't cut it.

@Alternate. I have to say there's no hole in your argument; you make valid points.


@Freedom. I know where you're coming from and you aren't completely wrong. The only thing I suggest is that try to not jump into making an apparent cause, the root cause of a problem. I have stated many points for the position I take; if they didn't persuade, I hope they at least gave you something to think about.
You said, "I do not understand where you get your argument that it will INCREASE the amount of weapons out there." When did I say this? Banning guns will make guns accessible to the wrong people only, I didn't say it will have increased effect overall.

You also said, "Making drugs illegal has lessened the problem of drugs. There are lesser drugs out there." Where are you getting these "facts" from? See this Time's article, pay attention to point 2: http://world.time.com/2012/06/28/illegal-drug-use-around-the-world-5-things-you-need-to-know/

@Rethink."Come to think of it. If there was any statistics about how many times guns were used for offensive purpose versus how many times they were used for defensive purpose, I think it would tilt heavily to the side of offensive use." Remember what I said about guns being defensive weapons, they act as a deterrent. How can you keep a tab on how many times the gun has become a deterrent? Also, despite what media has potrayed it to look like, gun violence is not as epidemic as you people are making it out to be.That doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything about it, but taking the gun away might not be the solution is what I am saying.

Look, if it was as easy as Govt instituting a ban and people would stop using it, I'd whole heartedly do it. What I am saying is that prohibition and banning hasn't worked and will not work. We have to come up with another approach to this problem.

Another thing to remember is you can only defend yourself if you carry a gun with you all the time. Very very few gun lovers actually do that. For example the movie theatre massacre, those people who died in the theatre probably had a gun at home. So having a gun is not enough. You must carry with you and be ready to draw and you must also have prior knowledge who will shoot and when. Only those who are members of a gang do that. Considering all these, your chances of being alive remains the same with or without a gun. The chances of you having a gun and being able to defend yourself with it are as much as winning the lottery. If the USA government goes berserk (hehe this is the reason why most US citizens own guns) then that's it. A gun will not protect u. US government can even get Saddam in his own country out of a hole in the ground, so if US government goes berserk, one can only pray. :)

@ kiddo, I can identify with your emotions and your desire to own a gun. But owning a gun definitely does not make the world a safer place. Rapes are also increasing and so are drunk drivers. But if they were made legal, then we would have a catastrophe to deal with, would we not?. Yes these incidents would increase, just like facebook users are increasing. But if facebook was not banned in China, the users would have been another billion more. (I am not against facebook am using an example to answer your question) So yes banning or making something illegal will make something less, not more. That is why we have law and order, to make crimes less. We have Australia and UK to show that after gun control laws, there are no such massacres there as compared to the usa. But yes, I do understand where you are coming from but still less guns out there, the safer our life becomes is something that we will all have to agree.