O-Trap;1880678 wrote:Curious. Why? Are deaths-by-truck somehow less horrible than deaths-by-gunshot?

No they're not. In fact, murder of innocent people is equally horrible regardless of the means used - as I'm sure we'd all agree. But since there are different types of events that fall under the umbrellas of violence or mass murder, different type of treatments will probably be required to "fix" any one of them. Just because you may not have the solution to everything under that umbrella, why not work on addressing specific types of events in the meantime. In the case of what I'm talking about here, I'm saying these large scale mass shootings as a particular kind of event.

If I'm wrong about guns, fine. I just have yet to hear a solid explanation as to why we are seeing so many of these events in recent years. If you look at that table I posted, it lists all mass shootings with 10 or more fatalities. You can say that list is "cherry picked", but it still represents a certain type of event. We have more than half the list. So what can be done about that.

queencitybuckeye;1880677 wrote:The reality is you're getting your ass handed to you and you're scrambling to find a way out.

Okay

Dr Winston O'Boogie;1880682 wrote:No they're not. In fact, murder of innocent people is equally horrible regardless of the means used - as I'm sure we'd all agree. But since there are different types of events that fall under the umbrellas of violence or mass murder, different type of treatments will probably be required to "fix" any one of them. Just because you may not have the solution to everything under that umbrella, why not work on addressing specific types of events in the meantime. In the case of what I'm talking about here, I'm saying these large scale mass shootings as a particular kind of event.

If I'm wrong about guns, fine. I just have yet to hear a solid explanation as to why we are seeing so many of these events in recent years. If you look at that table I posted, it lists all mass shootings with 10 or more fatalities. You can say that list is "cherry picked", but it still represents a certain type of event. We have more than half the list. So what can be done about that.

I don't mind your effort to address the topic, really. It's obviously horrific when it happens.

My contention is that the fact that mass murder is fairly uniform from nation to nation tells me that we have some level of prediction for what would happen if we were somehow able to remove firearms from being commonplace. Mass murder via different means would simply backfill the empty slice of the pie chart we've addressed, leaving us with the exact same problem as before, just with means that look more like other developed nations.

My own view on this is that IF we are going to successfully address this topic, it likely WILL have to be at the level of preventing mass murder at large, and for the most part, ignoring the means.

Let me ask you guys this - independent of the mass shooting/murder debate....

Why does the second amendment not make it lawful to own a shoulder-held rocket launcher? I'm not asking this from a smart ass perspective. What exactly is covered by the "arms" as stated in the constitution. It seems to be synonymous with guns, but the document isn't explicit about that.

Dr Winston O'Boogie;1880695 wrote:Let me ask you guys this - independent of the mass shooting/murder debate....

Why does the second amendment not make it lawful to own a shoulder-held rocket launcher? I'm not asking this from a smart ass perspective. What exactly is covered by the "arms" as stated in the constitution. It seems to be synonymous with guns, but the document isn't explicit about that.

From my personal perspective, I think it probably should, but I recognize that I'm in the minority.

O-Trap;1880694 wrote:I don't mind your effort to address the topic, really. It's obviously horrific when it happens.

My contention is that the fact that mass murder is fairly uniform from nation to nation tells me that we have some level of prediction for what would happen if we were somehow able to remove firearms from being commonplace. Mass murder via different means would simply backfill the empty slice of the pie chart we've addressed, leaving us with the exact same problem as before, just with means that look more like other developed nations.

My own view on this is that IF we are going to successfully address this topic, it likely WILL have to be at the level of preventing mass murder at large, and for the most part, ignoring the means.

Do you have a basis for your contention?

gut;1880445 wrote:Why? It's apples-to-oranges. Those regulations exist because investors demand the transparency. The buyers and sellers in the gun industry want no part of what you're proposing.

There are a lot of people who own a lot of guns who never went on a rampage. You're just proposing placebos. It sounds suspiciously like, since you can't make guns illegal, that you want to make gun ownership overly onerous and expensive. Now how do you feel about that with respect to, say, voting?

I disagree that it is apples to oranges. The securities laws came into existence not because investors demanded them but because banks lobbied for them heavily because they were tired of having to bear the cost of all the fraud. Investors were ultimately one of the beneficiaries of these laws but they weren't the ones who got them passed.

Likewise, the buyers and sellers in the gun industry will not advocate for them because the majority of them aren't criminals, etc. but they will ultimately benefit from a regulatory scheme that provides broad access to the the guns they want to buy and sell without undue burdens on their rights and an end to the question of banning certain guns, etc. I emphatically disagree that what I suggest is overly onerous or expensive. I basically propose Hawaii's laws nationwide with the added ability to examine licensees routinely and based on reasonable suspicions, etc. as with IA's. If Hawaii's laws are not undue burdens on the second amendment then they would not be nationwide.

Moreover, it is not a placebo as Hawaii is our best natural experiment we have in a country with the second amendment because it's not easy to import guns from neighboring states with lax regulations (e.g. the often used example of Chicago and illinois when the overwhelming majority of the guns come from Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, etc.).

It has the fewest gun related deaths in the U.S. with the strictest gun laws - basically permits to purchase, etc. - all without banning the scary looking rifles, etc. Take a look, sure looks like you can get all the firepower you want at Kona Guns & Ammo:



As to your voting question, the Supreme Court has ruled with respect both to guns and voting that it is within the province of government to impose things like voter I.D. requirements for voting and licensing requirements for obtaining a gun. Both are fine with me.

Indeed, as I said in my earlier reply, if access to firearms for the poor is a concern that could get this passed, (like access to voter ID's for the poor), I think subsidizing said access in both cases is necessary and proper.

CenterBHSFan;1880446 wrote:I can see republicans agreeing to that, BS, about as fast as I can see democrats agreeing to every voter must have a license/voter ID.

Maybe that can be a compromise between the parties? :RpS_w00t:

The Grand Bargain to end all grand bargains.

jmog;1880451 wrote:So you want the only Amendment that requires a license from the federal government to be the 2nd amendment?

Why shouldn't you have to have a license to prevent the government from invading your home?
How about a license to be allowed to speak your mind?

I am sorry that my post lists facts about said weapon that was used as it is not any different than any other semi-auto hunting rifle.

I'm really starting to worry about you Jmog. To answer your question, NO! The whole point of my argument is that we ROUTINELY REQUIRE LICENSES FOR ALL KINDS OF FREE EXPRESSION AND THESE LICENSE REQUIREMENTS ARE NOT DEEMED TO VIOLATE THE FIRST AMENDMENT. The particular example that I like to use is that it is crime in every state to engage in the free expression of communicating advice regarding the value of securities for compensation without a license.

Accordingly, you have it precisely the opposite. I just want us to treat the 2nd Amendment like we do the 1st Amendment and require licenses when there is a compelling interest in preserving public safety and domestic tranquility. Moreover, I believe this approach should be more amenable to firearm enthusiasts and those who desire to keep and bear arms because it does not preclude then from certain types of arms so long as they participate in the regulatory scheme.

As to your retarded counter examples - they simply reveal you didn't get the point. In any case, the jurisprudence regarding when you can search and seize property all rests on the sort of regulatory scheme that balances the compelling interests of public safety and individual rights that I am referring too e.g. when you can search a person without a warrant, etc. Indeed, it seems it is only the 2nd Amendment where we have zealots who are resistant to any kind of regulatory scheme (Personally, I believe this ultimately the fault of the democrats for pursuing the "Assault Weapons Ban" on a purely partisan basis in the 90's - before that, gun control was often bipartisan).

You of course then provide another example that proves my point. Under the first Amendment the government routinely places time, place and manner restrictions on our ability to speak our minds and routinely places restrictions and license requirements on the content of our speech when we speak our mind in certain circumstances e.g. the IA example provided above & numerous others.

As to your point about gun facts, etc. - I made no effort to dispute any of your claims regarding the nature of the firearm and so I don't even know why you posted that comment.

O-Trap;1880453 wrote:Careful. I was vilified pretty harshly for saying effectively the same thing.



I understand the thought behind this, but when you change the rules of the game, you'll just change how people play it.

Now, perhaps a more covert way of watching for suspicious activity would be logistically effective, but when it comes to something like tracking purchases through an ID, it'll just raise the demand on the quiet gun purchase market.



I think the distinction between an intangible (securities) and a tangible (a gun/dime bag/etc.) is significant. The former is, by its nature, more easily tracked. Now, the surrounding context of its buying and selling isn't, but the unit itself is.



The black market on narcotics and other controlled substances is also subject to penalty, though. And it's hard to necessarily prove that the National Firearms Act is the primary contributor to the lack of crime with automatic weapons. The ownership of those weapons is illegal, but we have no means for noting whether or not they're prevalent.

Worth considering, the BJS shows (Table 14) that as of 2004, only about 11.3% of inmates who possessed a firearm at the time of their offense purchased it through a retailer, pawn shop, gun show, or flea market. On the other hand, 77.4% got it from a personal contact, bought it illegally, or stole it. The remaining 11.2% were undetermined, it seems.

Worthy of note, this also seems to throw a stick into the spokes of those who want to make this entirely about mental health as well, since the measures against selling to someone with mental health issues would not stop those not buying from the store.

I'll just comment as to the intangible/tangible comment. In a securities case tangible documents evidencing the security is a crucial piece of evidence in proving the sale of a security just like a gun would be crucial evidence in proving the sale of a gun.

As to the claim that it will increase demand for the black market again I will reference the opportunity theory of crime which we discussed the last time a mass shooting happened. It is so easy to get guns that do a lot of damage that the opportunity is very easy for a motivated individual. As gun rights advocates often point out, a motivated individual can still kill with cars and knives - should we ban knives and cars???, etc.

And I think the point is an individual motivated to kill will readily substitute knives and cars for guns in the regular market if the the opportunity to get guns is harder. A person who is motivated to obtain the pleasure achieved from an injection of heroin cannot substitute that in the regular market.


Moreover, the way I see it is putting due diligence burdens on the distributors and sellers of firearms to know their customers really is a way of making the free market go about solving the problem of gun violence by making sure the producers and market participants take steps to bear the full costs of production rather than shifting them onto the rest of us via healthcare costs, security costs, etc.

iclfan2;1880459 wrote:I was more getting at that since he had domestic violence he shouldn’t have been able to own a gun anyway. Also, background checks having a problem doesn’t change the law, it’s the government, of course their system is fucked up. I’m all for harsher penalties for crimes but then minimum sentences get called racist. I don’t think beating your wife and child should only be a year in jail.

Regardless, even with your “rules”, a gun can be bought off the street easily if you want to. No law can stop it. And the reason people don’t even want to give an inch, like on bump stops, is because they don’t stop at an inch. Democrats already tried passing something with bump stocks in it and then loaded a bunch of other things too.

With respects to an AR vs pistol, a single pistol with multiple magazines would inflict just as much damage, although an AR would be easier to aim after 15 feet. The 40 round magazine in the AR also would have made it more effective.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Again, STOP - probably not. Substantially reduce??? The evidence is clear. I would bet anything that Hawaii's gun laws nationwide (with permits on the front end rather than just relying on background check failure which is clearly a failed system) + Massive buyback of existing guns + efforts to cajole gun industry to control supply of guns/engage in due diligence would reduce gun violence.

The Democrats of course though are only obsessed with banning certain guns which gets to your point that what conservatives believe is that if you give them an inch they'll take a mile. Accordingly, I think they out to couple something like the above with a 2/3 requirement for any future "assault weapons ban"

More cherry-picking.

I think one point is being missed in this debate. The United States has the most divisive and biased media in the world. The media stirs up a lot of the hatred that leads to these mas shootings. Whether it's CNN lying about Trump or Fox lying about Obama, when losers like the guy in Texas sir around and listen to that all day, they can snap. Throw in mental health issues and easy gun access and it adds up to 27 dead bodies.

So much rampant racism and white supremacy, that people need to commit these hoaxes. A similar hoax was exposed a week or two ago when a black man(student?) at K-State wrote racial slurs all over his car parked near the K-State police department. Will the people who got their panties in a bunch admit they were wrong? Will they learn their lesson and perhaps wait for an investigation, before drawing conclusions? Probably not, because it is what they want to believe. I said it before and I will say it again, the left gets a hard on whenever they can overreact to a story that involves some type of racial or identity issue.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/08/a-black-student-wrote-those-racist-messages-that-shook-the-air-force-academy/?utm_term=.b98dfcaf4de7

like_that;1880759 wrote:So much rampant racism and white supremacy, that people need to commit these hoaxes. A similar hoax was exposed a week or two ago when a black man(student?) at K-State wrote racial slurs all over his car parked near the K-State police department. Will the people who got their panties in a bunch admit they were wrong? Will they learn their lesson and perhaps wait for an investigation, before drawing conclusions? Probably not, because it is what they want to believe. I said it before and I will say it again, the left gets a hard on whenever they can overreact to a story that involves some type of racial or identity issue.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/08/a-black-student-wrote-those-racist-messages-that-shook-the-air-force-academy/?utm_term=.b98dfcaf4de7

First comment I read on the story.

That's a shame but IF he the cadet actually did it, I am guessing it was a cry for help because of the systemic practices within the Air Force.

Also, the way the Air Force screwed up the records of Devin Kelley, I am not sure I believe this story.

like_that;1880759 wrote:So much rampant racism and white supremacy, that people need to commit these hoaxes. A similar hoax was exposed a week or two ago when a black man(student?) at K-State wrote racial slurs all over his car parked near the K-State police department. Will the people who got their panties in a bunch admit they were wrong? Will they learn their lesson and perhaps wait for an investigation, before drawing conclusions? Probably not, because it is what they want to believe. I said it before and I will say it again, the left gets a hard on whenever they can overreact to a story that involves some type of racial or identity issue.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/08/a-black-student-wrote-those-racist-messages-that-shook-the-air-force-academy/?utm_term=.b98dfcaf4de7

SMDH

O-Trap;1880680 wrote:If my aunt had testicles, she'd be my uncle.

Highly presumptuous, at least in today's pc culture.

Dr Winston O'Boogie;1880673 wrote:To eat the elephant, you take one bite at a time. That's why I'm focusing on mass shootings. These guys that go into public places with their weapons and shoot anyone. Hypothetically if you eliminated this specific type of event, you will still have lots of violent crime to contend with; I acknowledge that. But now you'd have one terrible aspect of it reduced. Isn't that better than no change?

If you took the gun out of his hand and put a bomb, what did you really change? Seriously, you have to see that a deranged person (terrorist, mentally ill, whatever) will find a way.

Tim McVeigh used fertilizer and a truck. The attack in Nice, France used just a truck.

At the end of the day if a terrorist or mentally insane person is going to kill 40 people, why does it matter to you (and most leftists) if they use a gun, a home made bomb, a truck, a jet plane, etc?

Take the guns away they do it another way, the commonality of how often it happens is no more or less in other western countries once you just list mass killings rather than just mass shootings.

BoatShoes;1880742 wrote:I'm really starting to worry about you Jmog. To answer your question, NO! The whole point of my argument is that we ROUTINELY REQUIRE LICENSES FOR ALL KINDS OF FREE EXPRESSION AND THESE LICENSE REQUIREMENTS ARE NOT DEEMED TO VIOLATE THE FIRST AMENDMENT. The particular example that I like to use is that it is crime in every state to engage in the free expression of communicating advice regarding the value of securities for compensation without a license.

Accordingly, you have it precisely the opposite. I just want us to treat the 2nd Amendment like we do the 1st Amendment and require licenses when there is a compelling interest in preserving public safety and domestic tranquility. Moreover, I believe this approach should be more amenable to firearm enthusiasts and those who desire to keep and bear arms because it does not preclude then from certain types of arms so long as they participate in the regulatory scheme.

As to your retarded counter examples - they simply reveal you didn't get the point. In any case, the jurisprudence regarding when you can search and seize property all rests on the sort of regulatory scheme that balances the compelling interests of public safety and individual rights that I am referring too e.g. when you can search a person without a warrant, etc. Indeed, it seems it is only the 2nd Amendment where we have zealots who are resistant to any kind of regulatory scheme (Personally, I believe this ultimately the fault of the democrats for pursuing the "Assault Weapons Ban" on a purely partisan basis in the 90's - before that, gun control was often bipartisan).

You of course then provide another example that proves my point. Under the first Amendment the government routinely places time, place and manner restrictions on our ability to speak our minds and routinely places restrictions and license requirements on the content of our speech when we speak our mind in certain circumstances e.g. the IA example provided above & numerous others.

As to your point about gun facts, etc. - I made no effort to dispute any of your claims regarding the nature of the firearm and so I don't even know why you posted that comment.

Ah, typical Boatshoes, resort to ad hominem.


You are calling for a wholesale license for the 2nd Amendment (need a license to buy a guy) then use extremely partial examples of regulations on other rights (search and seizure, free speech, etc).

You asked for a license to pretty much buy any gun, period. If you apply this to the 1st Amendment you would need a license to ever speak your mind. If you applied it to the 4th you would need a license to keep any government official out of your house permanently.

You can't use the 'extreme' partial applications/regulations like securities, probable cause/warrants, yelling fire in a crowded theatre, etc as evidence that all of the 2nd Amendment should require a license. There is already background checks for the partial/extreme cases of felons, violent offenders, etc.

jmog;1880773 wrote:If you took the gun out of his hand and put a bomb, what did you really change? Seriously, you have to see that a deranged person (terrorist, mentally ill, whatever) will find a way.

Tim McVeigh used fertilizer and a truck. The attack in Nice, France used just a truck.

At the end of the day if a terrorist or mentally insane person is going to kill 40 people, why does it matter to you (and most leftists) if they use a gun, a home made bomb, a truck, a jet plane, etc?

Take the guns away they do it another way, the commonality of how often it happens is no more or less in other western countries once you just list mass killings rather than just mass shootings.

I agree with you that people intent on killing are going to find a way. However that doesn't mean we have to make it easier for them to offer better choices. Likely some of the people that have committed these crimes would have used nerve agent had it been available since it could have caused more devastation. I don't think that if someone took rifles off the planet, crime would go away. But not having access to these weapons would make the job of the perpetrator more difficult.

isadore;1880697 wrote:Do you have a basis for your contention?

Not sure which part you're referencing, so I suppose I'll try to succinctly answer both.

If you're asking about why I think they'd be backfilled, I'd go with the rates of rampage killers per population in the Americas and Europe being very, very close ... despite the differences in many of the laws involving guns. Per what I've seen, the rate of rampage killer in proportion to the population of the Americas is about 0.000013%. For all of Europe, it's about 0.000014%. The US population makes up about a third of all the Americas' population, so if the rates were notably that much higher here, it would certainly seem to indicate that the Americas should have an observably higher rate as a whole. [SUP](1, 2)[/SUP]

Now, this ALSO throws a wrench into the idea that more guns automatically means fewer murders, as well, because despite the higher gun ownership in the US, it doesn't skew the numbers down for the Americas, either.

As such, I don't think the prevalence of legally-owned guns has much of a negative OR positive effect on rampage killers.

If someone has it in their minds to kill on a large scale, I am confident in saying they're committed to it. I daresay that a will toward an extreme action rarely seems to be a half-hearted will that would give up at the sight of a hurdle. I think the above shows this to be true in the rate of rampage killers, and I think this is somewhat shown to hold true based on the BJS statistics I referenced earlier, showing that almost 80% of inmates who committed a crime with a firearm during 2004 obtained that firearm through means that would have circumvented any purchase legislation.

When a child is misusing a toy, taking the toy away is effective solely because the child doesn't have the means to get himself another toy. But we're dealing with a system that includes an underground market and people with access to money and transportation. If they really want the toy, they can get the toy. Taking away one doesn't have the same effect.

Now, as for my claim that the the only way we might be able to successfully engage this problem is by engaging it from the "mass murder" standpoint as opposed to the "weapon used" standpoint, I admit that it's 100% speculative. I have no good justification for thinking that would work, either.

BoatShoes;1880743 wrote:I'll just comment as to the intangible/tangible comment. In a securities case tangible documents evidencing the security is a crucial piece of evidence in proving the sale of a security just like a gun would be crucial evidence in proving the sale of a gun.

I probably wasn't very clear, as this doesn't quite address what I was getting at.

Buying a security is buying ownership of something that exists in a much more closed system -- the trading market. You can't "take" it somewhere else, because it's information that exists within that closed system. Now, you can say it's ownership of a percentage of that system, and that that system represents the sum total of physical properties within that niche, but even still, carving out exactly what that would mean you could physically lay claim to would be arduous ... nearly impossible, even.

On the other hand, a physical item that can be concealed and transported (hell, someone could send a gun into space on a satellite ... not so with securities) is MUCH harder to monitor or keep track of, because its system is large enough that no monitoring agency is adequate to do so ... and frankly, I'm not sure I'd want such a large, pervasive agency.

BoatShoes;1880743 wrote:As to the claim that it will increase demand for the black market again I will reference the opportunity theory of crime which we discussed the last time a mass shooting happened. It is so easy to get guns that do a lot of damage that the opportunity is very easy for a motivated individual. As gun rights advocates often point out, a motivated individual can still kill with cars and knives - should we ban knives and cars???, etc.

I wasn't really speaking to the possible uptick in black market activity as a support for any position on the topic. It's merely a possible uptick. Nothing guaranteed either way.

BoatShoes;1880743 wrote:And I think the point is an individual motivated to kill will readily substitute knives and cars for guns in the regular market if the the opportunity to get guns is harder. A person who is motivated to obtain the pleasure achieved from an injection of heroin cannot substitute that in the regular market.

Oh, I agree. At least, I think some would, though I would also contend that the bar for obtaining something illegal is low enough that the only reason one would HAVE to would be if timing came into play. A person who plots out for months wouldn't really have a hard time finding an illegal means for purchasing something as readily available as a gun (per the BJS stats I cited before). But yes, I think someone who flew into a rage and just wanted to kill people in the short order would probably resort to using a car, knife, etc.

BoatShoes;1880743 wrote:Moreover, the way I see it is putting due diligence burdens on the distributors and sellers of firearms to know their customers really is a way of making the free market go about solving the problem of gun violence by making sure the producers and market participants take steps to bear the full costs of production rather than shifting them onto the rest of us via healthcare costs, security costs, etc.

I do see this point, and frankly, despite my political inclinations, I wouldn't be entirely averse to holding some sellers responsible for selling firearms to those who either gave reason to believe they intended to use it for violent ends or who gave no consideration to someone's mental makeup.

Freedom and responsibility are meant to go hand-in-hand. If one insists on his freedom to act, he also insists on the responsibility of his actions. Now, we can argue that the sellers' actions aren't the ones leading to violence, but I'm okay with having that discussion.

However, I'll go back again to the fact that between three-quarters and four-fifths of guns used in violent crimes appear to have been obtained outside the realm of what would be affected by legislation anyway, and this doesn't take into account where the current legislation isn't effectively enforced. Factor that in, and the number of offenders whose obtaining a gun would be affected by legislation would be even smaller.

QuakerOats;1880764 wrote:Highly presumptuous, at least in today's pc culture.

To my knowledge, I'm the only person on my side of the family who isn't a registered Republican. It's a pretty safe bet.

Feinstein trying to introduce an assault weapon ban, which only will raise her money and never pass. 10 round capacity, "military characteristics" (LOOKS SCARY!), and a law telling you they have to be secured?

• Bans the sale, manufacture, transfer and importation of 205 military-style assault weapons by name. Owners may keep existing weapons.
• Bans any assault weapon that accepts a detachable ammunition magazine and has one or more military characteristics including a pistol grip, a forward grip, a barrel shroud, a threaded barrel or a folding or telescoping stock. Owners may keep existing weapons.
• Bans magazines and other ammunition feeding devices that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, which allow shooters to quickly fire many rounds without needing to reload. Owners may keep existing magazines.
• Requires that grandfathered assault weapons are stored using a secure gun storage or safety device like a trigger lock.

iclfan2;1880804 wrote:

• Requires that grandfathered assault weapons are stored using a secure gun storage or safety device like a trigger lock.

That's a really interesting one. I assume most responsible gun owners have their guns very securely locked. But would that then mean if someone defeats the device, for whatever reason, that a gun owner could be liable?

Dr Winston O'Boogie;1880788 wrote:I agree with you that people intent on killing are going to find a way. However that doesn't mean we have to make it easier for them to offer better choices. Likely some of the people that have committed these crimes would have used nerve agent had it been available since it could have caused more devastation. I don't think that if someone took rifles off the planet, crime would go away. But not having access to these weapons would make the job of the perpetrator more difficult.

How are we making it easier? By definition making it easier would be getting rid of ALL regulations/restrictions on gun ownership, no background checks, make fully auto rifles perfectly legal and sold at Walmart...THAT would be making it easier.

Dr Winston O'Boogie;1880788 wrote:I agree with you that people intent on killing are going to find a way. However that doesn't mean we have to make it easier for them to offer better choices. Likely some of the people that have committed these crimes would have used nerve agent had it been available since it could have caused more devastation. I don't think that if someone took rifles off the planet, crime would go away. But not having access to these weapons would make the job of the perpetrator more difficult.

Maybe, sure. However, as has been noted, there were legal firearms that were every bit as legal as the ones used that would have been more suited to the goal of mass murder, and the murderers still opted for something else.

Either way, we're talking about a spectrum. Your argument here is to move to a point of the spectrum that is closer to one end, but it's worth noting that we're already on a portion of the spectrum that has banned certain weapons, meaning we aren't sitting at one extreme or the other. At present, we don't view that as sufficient, but why do we think that if we move just a little bit further, we'll be happy with the results? We've moved this same direction so far, but we have yet to be happy with our results, it would seem.

Not to mention the fact that we've done something similar before, but we didn't see any real notable difference.

Moreover, we can note that, worldwide, the difference isn't that substantial when it comes to rampage killing rates.

What is the goal? To "lessen" killing sprees? By what percentage? Any? Wait a year, and it might drop ... or raise. We don't seem to have any real goal, so any "answer" is mostly a shot in the dark, anyway.

If the goal is to stop mass killings entirely, then it would seem that, at some point, we'll have to address something they all have in common. However, since no developed nation of any real size has been able to rid themselves of rampage killings yet, I'd suggest that it's probably a pipe dream unless we can come up with some reason to believe that we have a solution without defeaters.

This is a hard topic. Not just because of the gravitas, but even because of the seeming complexity of the problem. I've started to try to be more understanding with people, regardless of their positions, because of that. Doesn't mean I'm any closer to agreeing with such a person, but I understand the passion and insistence on wanting a "solution," whatever that means.