TRUMP 2020!

[Most Lee Harmless]

Bit of a red herring : the majority of fire-arms used in mass shootings have been legally obtained and held, often not by the shooter but by the family of the shooter.

Bringing up the mental health of said shooters is another red herring : its an obvious stance to take : 'only a crazy would kill ten/twenty/thirty kids!' : but nobody seems to have noticed this craziness enough to intervene beforehand. Its the old 'they seemed such a quite person' routine when the cops are digging up the bodies from under next door's patio. The signs of 'craziness' gets manufactured after the event : 'he always wore odd socks!', 'She wore white shoes before Labour Day!' and the old favourite 'he had funny eyes!'.

Quite how any medical professional can predict future mental health concerns, never mind how you could legislate the powers to act upon them, is a matter far more concerning than any alleged assaults on second amendment rights.

The final nail in the coffin of the alleged difficulty in obtaining a firearm is that the USA has 400 million of them that are, in the main, legally held. 40% of households have not found the task of passing background checks or wait times to be insurmountable.

The states are notorious for the complexity of differences in many laws. The serving and provision of alcohol is far more difficult a legal hurdle in most than owning a firearm is.

My own view is that who can gain access to legally held firearms is more an issue that is in need of resolution than easing the buying of them is.

There are the majority of owners who practice safe ownership. A sturdy gun-cabinet and keeping to the good habits of locking it is one.

Be honest, for a teenager its easier these days to 'borrow' the gun collection than the family car.

[Meliva]

Mental issues are the reason for most shootings, not the guns... but i know, we cant single anyone out, we my hurt their feelings... instead, lets give them meds and send them out into the world then blame everything else when they snap.

You are right, but there would not be any school shooting without guns. Now of course that's not going to happen and I don't even want that, but it just shows you. How easy it is to buy a firearm has nothing to do with how easy it is to obtain one. Many if not most shooting the perp kills themselves afterwards, so it doesn't matter how many laws they break in the process of acquiring the gun.

Which is why I am for taking assault rifles OUT OF CIRCULATION. The government should buy them back and then get rid of them. Sure, if someone really wanted to they could probably get one off the black market, but something like this would make it such a hassle to use an AR-15 that they are more likely to choose a different weapon - like a handgun - which has smaller capacity so in turn less people would die.

Maybe this is a big stretch just to reduce the number of shooting deaths by maybe 10 people per year. I'm just saying think about it. It would eventually pay off.

People are smart and adaptive. If a person decides one day "hey, you know what, I'm fed up. I'm gonna go to my school/work/street etc. and kill as many people as I can" they can and will find a way to do just that-with or without a gun. Make a home made bomb. Poison the food or water at a party/social gathering. get in your car and drive through a crowd. Go to a hospital or nursing home and set it on fire.

All of those actions, would kill many people. Does this mean we should ban poisonous items, cars, and everything else that could be used to kill many people? No of course not. Tools are just that-tools, and ultimately it's the person using said tools who determines what they get used for.

As for guns, if I remember correctly, some of the places with the strictest gun laws, have the highest gun deaths. Chicago being one of them. Again however, old Mel's memory is shite, so I may just be crazy and misremembering

[Most Lee Harmless]

Mel : how about 'Chicago has the toughest gun laws because it has the highest rate of gun-related crime'.

Which makes as much sense as putting it vice versa. Cause 》Effect or Effect 》Cause ?

The most common weapon available to all is a knife. Every kitchen is full of them. Yet Chicago manages over 80% gun use in murders and only 10% involve knives. Vehicular homicide is even less common and more applicable to drunk/drugged/evasive driving taking out a random passer-by than a targetted murder attempt.

[Meliva]

yet it still has super high gun crimes. So are the laws working? Doesn't seem so. Like I said. People are smart and adaptive. Many folks can and will get guns illegally if doing so legally is too hard. Or they eventually give up and go with bombs, cars or other tools to cause harm.

My point being that super strict gun laws, most likely won't have any real impact. I could be wrong, but based on Chicago it seems they don't work as well as one would hope.

Edit-and look at Australia- most of their major massacres are caused by folks doing alternative methods. Like that nursing home fire that killed about 14 people If memory is serving me correctly. If not, I'll whip my memory for being faulty

[Most Lee Harmless]

Look at Oklahoma City bombing. Or the Unabomber. World is full of folk who will find a way to watch it burn.
Doesnt mean we should hand them all matches just because they could go out and steal a bulldozer and flatten it instead.

[Meliva]

Look at Oklahoma City bombing. Or the Unabomber. World is full of folk who will find a way to watch it burn.
Doesnt mean we should hand them all matches just because they could go out and steal a bulldozer and flatten it instead.

Curious as to who's handing them matches. I certainly don't approve of giving anyone something dangerous if you don't know if they can be trusted with it. So folks who legally get a gun need to properly own it. My father had 3 old hunting rifles, and he had them literally chained up on a plaque on the wall, and kept no ammo in the house when he was raising me and my siblings. There was 0 chance for any of us to end up doing any harm. As we would need to find the right ammo-which means going out and buying it, unchain them somehow, load them then use them. Good luck for a kid doing all that.

I do agree that we need to keep laws to make things hard for folks to cause damage, but ultimately, even with the strictest most tyrannical laws, some folks will find a way. So there needs to be a balance. We don't want no laws and anarchy, nor should we want authoritarian levels of laws. Both are awful.

[The Lamb]

Danik, Im with you on locking them up. I and every gun owner I know have gun safes with big ol locks. But a few things to consider.

One reason for the amount of guns is collectors and wills leaving them to their kids. Hell, i have a 1917 Eddystone (Enfield) rifle from WW1 and it still shoots true 30/06. That gun is over 100 years old.

I have a salt water fishing pole for boat fishing deep down, a surf caster deep sea pole for cashing from the beach, an ultra light action pole for river fishing smaller trout, a medium action pole for river fishing and lake fishing, and fly rod for if i feel frisky, but i dont use that much. So by my count, thats 5 fishing poles. What do i need with 5 fishing poles?

Have you ever gone and bought a gun? Shot a gun?

Blue, I get your point about driving into a school and hurting people, but im sure the people in London and NYC (to name a few) would disagree with your conclusion about the mass carnage from people aiming vehicles into people.

Bottom line, the gun debate is so played out. They arent going away, but i agree with Danik again that people need to be a little less PC and less worried about feelings and call out nutty behavior for what it is to stop the needless bloodshed!

[Dmanwuzhere]

put whoopings back in school both from peers and teachers
these brats wanna kill someone for making fun of them and suddenly its the guns fault

i fought in school and some of my best friends came from those fights
respect was earned by winning or losing and most of the time a suspension could be avoided by an apology and a handshake
now they grow up with no respect and wanna kill for it

but the irony of it all is when i hear someone petition against guns due to kids killed but support abortion ... hypocrite much
seems like some abortion tools are due for banning lol

[Argo]

Bit of a red herring : the majority of fire-arms used in mass shootings have been legally obtained and held, often not by the shooter but by the family of the shooter.

Bringing up the mental health of said shooters is another red herring : its an obvious stance to take : 'only a crazy would kill ten/twenty/thirty kids!' : but nobody seems to have noticed this craziness enough to intervene beforehand. Its the old 'they seemed such a quite person' routine when the cops are digging up the bodies from under next door's patio. The signs of 'craziness' gets manufactured after the event : 'he always wore odd socks!', 'She wore white shoes before Labour Day!' and the old favourite 'he had funny eyes!'.

Quite how any medical professional can predict future mental health concerns, never mind how you could legislate the powers to act upon them, is a matter far more concerning than any alleged assaults on second amendment rights.

I'm not sure if I understand correctly. Mental health of said shooters ia another red herring?

Broadly, these studies consider three categories of risk factors: life events and history, mental illness, and types and numbers of firearms used.
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _Offenders

[Most Lee Harmless]

Mental health issues as a 'reason' for mass shootings is an after the event assessment, with 20/20 hindsight and self-evidential because, you know, they 'had to be nuts!'. So it is no difficult matter to trawl back and find the proof.

That those 'proofs' could be found in other folks lives and did not lead to mass-slaughter does not get 'measured' in the same way. So what does drive some folk dealing with problematic mental health issues to engage in such acts but not others? No pun intended, but we have no true idea of the triggers in such acts.

Saying they only did it because they are nutters is no more helpful or useful than blaming 'evil' or that it was a Monday.

So, in my view it's a red herring : it distracts from a valid understanding of cause and effect.

We seem easily to accept strict regulation around other life-threatening technology and activity. We have inches-thick regulations covering gas supplies, electrical equipment, aircraft building, maintenance and operation. Car and trucks likewise. But when it comes to fire-arms we seem to think any regulation or controls is per se 'a bad thing'.

Maybe that is the irrationality needs considering.