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Comment by rms_returns | Hacker News Reader

> Or is it not a matter of sheer numbers, but who gets killed?

In the UK, it was the Dunblane incident that triggered this (you can google it). In the 1990s, some madman with gun just strode inside a high-school at Dunblane in Scotland and started indiscriminate firing. Many teachers and students were killed and after this event, the UK government just outlawed the guns in the hands of civilians.

Maybe, in USA such an extreme event hasn't happened yet, so they have not banned guns yet.

--edit--

Corrected period.

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Dunblane incident:18 people killed. There are 5 incidents in the US with more fatalities than that: http://timelines.latimes.com/deadliest-shooting-rampages/

If the Sandy Hook massacre didn't do the same in the US then I can't imagine any single event that will.

And in Australia it was the Port Arthur massacre, 35 dead and 23 wounded in 1996.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_(Australi...

"Maybe, in USA such an extreme event hasn't happened yet"

Really? Columbine, Orlando, Sandy Hook, San Bernardino, Virginia Tech.

50-60 years? It was the mid-90s. And it wasn’t guns that were outlawed but pistols.

Yeah I remember almost exactly when it happened because it (and later Columbine) set off a lot of media hysteria about violence in video games. I think there might be consequences to playing violent games on some level (it's your mission to shoot people) but the way they went about it was wrong-headed and sensational.

Yeah, 1996. A certain Andy Murray of tennis fame was in the school at the time.

> Around 50-60 years ago

Dunblane was 1996. 20 years ago.

> Maybe, in USA such an extreme event hasn't happened yet.

It resulted in 18 deaths, which ranks it close to Columbine (15). Since Columbine there have been countless mass shootings with a higher death toll.

There have been three: http://timelines.latimes.com/deadliest-shooting-rampages/

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