Norway

I think that nobody had expected that a crazy fucker would come and went on a killing spree, because they have thought that Norway was quite safe. They were wrong.

Geert Wilders and the PVV have distances themselves from the actions of the man who have killed those people.

 

Lets be honest here, the average person wouldn't of expected this. To call children naive over this is pretty stupid. Children are allowed to be naive and they aren't expected to have foreseen such events let alone should they have.

 

Yeah. I actually wanted to remove that sentance, but you beat me to it. (done) I really meant that the people of Norway were a bit naive by thinking that their country was free from these sort of things. Same here in the Netherlands. We have never have thought that a spree killer would go and kill people. Or that someone could go and kill a politician Pim Fortuin or a well known artist Theo van Gogh.

What do you think? Should PVV get milder or not?

 

No, they were right. Norway IS quite safe. The fact that an incident like this is met with such incredulity is precisely because it never normally happens. Even including this event, anyone in Norway is still more likely to win the lottery than to be shot.

The correct response to something like this is not to change Norway's gun laws or anything like that - Norway had the optimum conditions already. The correct response is to carry on exactly how it was before. The system works.

 

End result is if someone wants to kill someone, they can do it. Nothing to stop me grabbing a kitchen knife and stabbing my next door neighbours. As Smuelissimo said you just gotta keep doing what you are doing.

 

Yes. Norway is quite safe indeed. Yes. There were only a few incidents. Like the storm of anger against a cartoonist, a failed bomber, a man who have shot two Israeli and a chemist who have made a bomb. But no country is truly safe.

Like I said, it is the same thing that we thought here in the Netherlands. That we thought that we were save here. Not anymore.

 

Clearly the guy meticulously planned the whole thing, doing plenty of research into an event where he could get away with what he did. I don't think any county could have prepared for a random occurence like that without the cost of added security all over the place hitting the tax payer hard. I'm sure Norway is just as safe as any developed country realistically can be.

 

I am pleased to see the tide turn away from there-should-have-been-more-security-on-the-island to there-is-no-reason-why-this-should-have-been-anticipated.
If one's agenda is to place blame for the tragedy then one should blame the perpetrator and not try to pass the buck to people who were supposed to have anticipated it.

 

I didn't know that also a Norwegian paper posted the cartoons. Also, the apology from the Norwegian government makes me sad:

"Respect" of this kind should not be one-sided. Still, old news and a even older debate.

 

It would have been better that it goes two-sides. That was just one of the things that have happend in Norway in the past. Just an example.

Here in the Netherlands some politicians and people who are speaking against another religions have to use bodyguards to get safe back home. Geert Wllders as an example.

 

I don't think it should be considered, that'd just create a paranoid society. As others said, if someone really wants to do this, they will be able to. If there had been some more security, he'd have accounted for it and just planned it differently.

 

Aren't Norwegian police unarmed? I had the conversation last night that, had one or two people on the island had a concealed weapons permit, and a handgun, this could have played out a lot differently.

 

I don't understand why you guys think that a 16 year old with a handgun would be the big saviour of the day. Breivik obviously has good aim. He got eighty of the kids. Going toe-to-toe with with a youth toting a pistol, I'm sure he would have won.

 

I was referring to an adult. Such as perhaps the leader of the camp, or giving the damn cop a gun, since I don't think Norwegian police carry them.


...how far we've fallen from our Viking roots.

 

I do what I can with my intercourse-by-force policy I exercise in cities I'm passing through.

 

Police do get guns. They are locked up in their patrol cars. They need to get permission to use them from the comissioner, but if they can't get permission in time, they can just pop them out and validate it later.

It also apparently worked out, because they've fired less than ten shots per year on average, and a few months ago the stories were about how they were using island villages where they made people get jobs instead of low-security prisons. Breivik is an extremely isolated case.

 

600 is only like a school's worth (if that) of people though, and no one would expect all the schools in a country to be protected by even a single policeman. I know if someone had tried the same thing at my secondary school they'd have probably killed far more than just 80 people going from class room to class room, and the police would not have been able to react in time to stop such a person from clearing several classrooms either. I know it was a political event, but honestly I think I would have thought one policeman was enough. Someone here in the UK went on a gun fueled rampage a few months back and the police didn't react in enough time to stop him either (he killed himself eventually I think after killing upwards of 10 people) - you can never prepare for someone going on a mad rampage it's just not feasible.

 

Julian Assange would be proud of you, TDC!

That's not what I'd previously heard, so I'd say that even locked up guns are better than none.

Actually, I work for a School District, and we have not only emergency drills called 'intruder drills' but we have around a 5 minute (tops) response time by police. Oh, and I live in a rural area. This isn't an inner city school where drugs, gangs, and such things are a problem, we're an isolated area. While yeah, he might catch people in the commons (if we had an intruder), all of our doors can be locked from inside and outside, so teachers can actually seal the room and move the class away from the windows as much as possible, in the case of an event like this.

Admittedly, it's a lot harder to do any kind of security on an island, but it still shouldn't be impossible.

 

I know Irish cops don't carry guns and that is the way it should be. Having spoken to them they said by not having guns they seem less threatening and it lowers the chance of them being shot at. Australian police that I have spoken to also believe not having guns would actually protect them more however seeing though they have them now the bar has been set and to disarm them now would be the worst thing they could do.