School Shootings

[Aseahawkfan]

I’m going to try this one more time. I think my big mistake was taking it from right to bear arms to protect against tyranny to the idea of the violent dissolution of government. That just scares people and is like getting in my car and going from 0 to 200.

Let me break it down in a less volatile manner.

1. The 2nd Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was written as checks on government power to ensure the freedom of the people and to limit the power of federal and state government. The 2nd Amendment is part of the bill of rights because the Founders had a real fear of a standing army controlled by the government that could be turned on the people. The best way they could create a check on the military power of the government was to maintain a right of the people to bear arms to if necessary protect themselves from the military and police power of the government. There are a lot of quotes and rhetoric from that time making it quite clear this was the intent of the 2nd Amendment.

None of the amendments in The Bill of Rights are to support the government’s ability to form an army. That power of government is enumerated in a separate section of the Constitution. This is why the argument that the 2nd Amendment was created so the government can call up the citizenry as an army is a false one. The Bill of Rights was not written to support the government and was written as a document to limit the power of the federal and state governments as well as provide some clear powers for the individual and the state. The war powers of government are covered elsewhere and not part of the rights used to check the power of government.

2. The 2nd Amendment even in America has been denied people to inflict tyranny upon them. In particular, denial of the 2nd Amendment to people of African descent to keep them enslaved and to the Native Americans to keep them from being able employ the weapons the European ancestry people would use against them to take their land and protect themselves from genocide.

Outside of America there is a long history of free men owning arms in any culture that values liberty to protect their liberty and maintain military power with the people to protect themselves from the government. Governments have long controlled arms as a precursor to tyranny whether in class-based European societies where a police and military class like the knight class controlled arms to be able to subjugate and control the peasantry or like the Nazis did with Jewish people to limit their power to protect themselves when they decided to commit genocide on them.

You are seeing the same thing play out in Ukraine in the modern day where the Russians would deny the people weapons to defend themselves if they were able. Military power is essential to maintain freedom for a people, not just with a professional military but also amongst the general populace.
These types of tyrants do not respect the vote or the words of the people they are tyrannizing. They only fear their ability to fight back, which requires arms.

3. The 2nd Amendment has a long history of regulation. This idea the 2nd Amendment does not allow for any kind of regulation or limitation is a false one. Even from the Founding of the nation, there were limitations on weapons ownership. Everyone didn’t get to own a cannon or buy a war ship armed with cannons. In general the idea was that citizens had the arms of a soldier. At the time of creation of the Amendment it was usually a musket or rifle of some kind, a sidearm, and some kind of knife. It obviously changed over time to repeating rifles and pistols to the modern day assault rifle and repeating pistol. This is why I don’t support an assault rifle ban because free citizens should be able own up to the weapons of a common soldier that would be used to fight on their behalf as American soldiers do for our freedom in other nations (or so we are told).

But all through the history of the 2nd Amendment, the government has been allowed to regulate rights as they have done with freedom of speech, illegal search and seizure, privacy laws, and so many other amendments where the actions of the citizenry have required the government and courts to interpret if an action taken by the citizens is protected by a Constitutional Amendment. The 2nd Amendment is no different. It has long and storied history of regulation and interpretation while attempting to maintain its intent and purpose within The Bill of Rights to limit the power of the federal government.

4. Why does nothing get done? There is a huge messaging problem within both parties with the 2nd Amendment.

The Democrats and apparently some Republicans like riverdog do not respect the 2nd Amendment as an important political right with a history and a purpose within The Bill of Rights. Thus they talk about it in a manner like it’s some anachronistic right, while those of us that believe it is still necessary watch the police shoot unarmed people, watch the government arrest and harass people who don’t agree with them, and even in recent times watched a president’s followers attempt to overturn an election and one of his key supporters in General Flynn call for a coup. I don't think that indicates an environment where we can all feel like we'll never have the need to take up on arms to defend ourselves from criminals or possibly the police or military of the nation.

And on the Republican side the 2nd Amendment has been hijacked by gun hobbyists and gun companies who want to sell the 2nd Amendment as some right to load up on guns and ammo, pretend you’re a liberty lover exercising your 2nd Amendment rights, while they just make gun companies wealthy and shoot for personal entertainment.

The real 2nd Amendment was meant for people to work in cooperative fashion and act as a citizen soldiery. They would train. They would own the arms of the common soldier. They didn’t own weapons as a hobby. It’s not a protection that allows a weapons dealer to sell to criminals or in the modern day some mentally unstable individual. Which is why waiting periods, background checks, and requiring training are well within the legal interpretations for the 2nd Amendment.

Switzerland which I posted as an example has done a far better job of implementing a 2nd Amendment type of right than America. The current handling of the 2nd Amendment is lazy, inaccurate, and a boon mostly to gun companies who want to sell gun hobbyists lots of guns and ammo while barely caring about the negative aspects of their rhetoric and business actions.

This should all be cleaned up. If the Democrats want to make a real effort to get moderate Republican and Nonpartisan support to clean it up, all they have to do is adjust their messaging to show they understand the 2nd Amendment, talk about the history of the Amendment, and pursue support from moderate Republicans who want something done about this insanity.

No one wants to see citizens, especially children killed, because some lunatic has far too easy access to weapons made for killing. But at the same time we want some assurances the 2nd Amendment is understood and considered when making these decisions.

[RiverDog]

Yeah, I couldn't believe it, either. Most police officers, or at least the ones I've ever met, have a genuine interest in helping those that are in need, and what other people have a greater need than grade school children?

I might be going off on a tangent, but the other thing I worry about is that this labor shortage is eliminating the fear employees used to have of losing their job. I can remember when I was in college, you could tell which professors had tenure, in other words, they couldn't be fired. They were the ones that wouldn't stay when class was over to answer a question.

Over the years, I've told a number of people not to "F this job up as jobs are hard to come by." Fear is a powerful motivator, but it doesn't work in today's economy. Why should a cop, or anyone else, worry about losing their job when they can easily get another job of equal or greater value? I wonder how many cops are in their jobs simply for the pay and benefits, especially after the past couple of years of humiliation and unending attacks on their profession. Has the combination of these factors resulted in an "I don't give a crap" attitude? Or being that the school was predominantly Hispanic, did race enter into it? I have lots of very ugly thoughts and suspicions about what was really going on in those cop's minds.

I could be wrong, but I think a lot of the Uvalde Police Dept are mostly hispanic themselves based on their facebook page, so I don't know if race is a big factor there. I see it more as self-preservation and cowardice, and possibly incompetence (though it shouldn't be since the Uvalde Police Dept had been posting about all the training they've been receiving).

I wasn't aware of that. At least it alleviates one of my suspicions.

There was at least one act of incompetence. The 911 dispatcher, even though she had heard gunfire in the background, told a student that was inside the classroom and in hiding to keep talking to her, which she did, and the gunman heard her and it prompted him to shoot her dead.

[RiverDog]

The 2nd Amendment is part of the bill of rights because the Founders had a real fear of a standing army controlled by the government that could be turned on the people.

Sorry that I cut off most of your post, but I didn't feel it was necessary to reply to all of it to make a point.

You're right, there were a number of the Founding Fathers, just how many I don't know, that were dead set against a standing army and favored militas comprised of ordinary citizens, which they felt were less likely to be manipulated by a repressive government. But there were others that were concerned about an invasion by a foreign force and felt that a professional army of regulars was the best means to "provide for the common defense", that they would be better trained and with better tactics to repel a European army should they come under attack.

As I mentioned earlier, the Founding Fathers consisted of 55 delegates from New England to Georgia. There was no over riding, dominant philosophy. There were competing ideologies during the creation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the debate about a standing army was one of them. Neither you nor I can say with any degree of certainty what the fears and desires of the Founding Fathers were. They did not speak with a single voice. Like I said, it was not like Moses coming down from heaven to read his 10 Commandments etched in stone.

As it turned out, it didn't take long for the new country to form a standing Army. Just two years after the Constitution was ratified, Congress adapted the First American Regiment, regarded by many historians as the birth of the US Army:

The first decade under the Constitution represented a new founding for all three services. But Congress first had to create an agency to administer military affairs. The Confederation had a War Department headed by a Secretary at War (Henry Knox since 1785). In August 1789 Congress maintained continuity by creating a Department of War, with Knox remaining as Secretary of War. Then Congress formally adopted the First American Regiment (and an artillery battalion raised during Shays’ Rebellion) on September 29th of that year, a date that represents the Army’s third birthday–and perhaps this is the one that should really count. The government soon augmented the regiment with four additional companies, and in subsequent years it slowly expanded the Regular Army. By the early 1800s, the United States had made the critical decision to maintain at least a small standing Regular Army in both peace and war, which was a clear-cut victory for the (Founding Fathers') nationalists and for Moderate Whig ideology.

https://www.fpri.org/article/2007/04/un ... ed-forces/

My point is that we should not be using the convictions of the Founding Fathers to justify the 2nd Amendment. They were not in total agreement on the subject, indeed, it was those Founding Fathers that favored a standing army that won out.

[NorthHawk]

I doubt any of them envisioned the 2nd amendment being used to justify inaction on the relatively
regular killing of children and other citizens going about their business.

[I-5]

I doubt any of them envisioned the 2nd amendment being used to justify inaction on the relatively
regular killing of children and other citizens going about their business.

Yup, keep the 2nd Amendment and simply ban AR's. Who would have a problem with that?

[mykc14]

Yup, keep the 2nd Amendment and simply ban AR's. Who would have a problem with that?

If only it were that simple.

[Aseahawkfan]

Sorry that I cut off most of your post, but I didn't feel it was necessary to reply to all of it to make a point.

You're right, there were a number of the Founding Fathers, just how many I don't know, that were dead set against a standing army and favored militas comprised of ordinary citizens, which they felt were less likely to be manipulated by a repressive government. But there were others that were concerned about an invasion by a foreign force and felt that a professional army of regulars was the best means to "provide for the common defense", that they would be better trained and with better tactics to repel a European army should they come under attack.

As I mentioned earlier, the Founding Fathers consisted of 55 delegates from New England to Georgia. There was no over riding, dominant philosophy. There were competing ideologies during the creation of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and the debate about a standing army was one of them. Neither you nor I can say with any degree of certainty what the fears and desires of the Founding Fathers were. They did not speak with a single voice. Like I said, it was not like Moses coming down from heaven to read his 10 Commandments etched in stone.

As it turned out, it didn't take long for the new country to form a standing Army. Just two years after the Constitution was ratified, Congress adapted the First American Regiment, regarded by many historians as the birth of the US Army:

The first decade under the Constitution represented a new founding for all three services. But Congress first had to create an agency to administer military affairs. The Confederation had a War Department headed by a Secretary at War (Henry Knox since 1785). In August 1789 Congress maintained continuity by creating a Department of War, with Knox remaining as Secretary of War. Then Congress formally adopted the First American Regiment (and an artillery battalion raised during Shays’ Rebellion) on September 29th of that year, a date that represents the Army’s third birthday–and perhaps this is the one that should really count. The government soon augmented the regiment with four additional companies, and in subsequent years it slowly expanded the Regular Army. By the early 1800s, the United States had made the critical decision to maintain at least a small standing Regular Army in both peace and war, which was a clear-cut victory for the (Founding Fathers') nationalists and for Moderate Whig ideology.

https://www.fpri.org/article/2007/04/un ... ed-forces/

My point is that we should not be using the convictions of the Founding Fathers to justify the 2nd Amendment. They were not in total agreement on the subject, indeed, it was those Founding Fathers that favored a standing army that won out.

We will never agree on this. The only way to check the military power of government is an armed populace. I have read enough history to know there is likely never to be a time when this is not the case. No laws or anything of the kind will do it if those in charge of the government turn the power of the military and police on the people. Not voting. Not words. Nothing will prevent the tyranny from such action except armed resistance. The 2nd Amendment made it into the Constitution as a political right to check the power of the government's military and police power, so that Americans would have the means to fight back against such encroachment should it be necessary.

The Founders weren't in agreement on many of the rights. Some didn't even want a Bill of Rights. Doesn't change that the Bill of Rights had enough support to be included. Citizens should have clear rights to defend themselves from government overreach and tyrannical behavior.

Yes. George Washington supported a Standing Army. Any student of history knows that competition between nation states requires a modern standing army. Just as any student of history knows the only check against a standing army is an armed citizenry. Both the standing army and the armed citizenry must coexist to maintain liberty.

[Aseahawkfan]

I doubt any of them envisioned the 2nd amendment being used to justify inaction on the relatively
regular killing of children and other citizens going about their business.

I don't support inaction. Never have supported inaction.

I don't see why the Democrats have allowed the messaging to go so wrong. They literally just have to acknowledge the 2nd Amendment as a legitimate political right with a purpose, show it's long history of regulation whether Town Marshall's controlling guns in town to federal regulations on ownership of automatic weapons and other ordinance, and work within the framework of the 2nd Amendment's intent and purpose to create a better framework for ensuring weapons are only held by responsible citizens.

They should be requiring training prior to owning a weapon. They should raise the age to 21 as well as raise the age to enter the military to 21. They should allow psychological evaluation of a gun owner including checking any possible medications the individual is taking that might cause them to act in a psychotic manner. I would probably even support a limit on gun ownership as well like one assault rifle and sidearm per citizen, yearly training classes to maintain proficiency, and the like. Make the right a real act of citizenship, not some fringe hobby with a bunch of yahoos yapping about how many guns they own.

Stop letting the gun hobbyists and gun companies hijack the 2nd Amendment and turn it into some bastardized right to buy as many guns and as much ammo as they can afford with no good background check because the Democrats refused to discuss it as a legitimate and important political right with a long history and tradition in this nation. The more they try to sweep it under the carpet, pretend it is some invention of Founders that is no longer necessary, and the like the more they push the Republicans into a corner they can't get out of and rile up the anti-gun control crowd screaming about the Democrats are wanting to take their guns away.

I see the fix as pretty easy, but for some reason Democrats just don't want to do it. It's always ban. It's always 2nd Amendment is a stupid right. And the usual from them. You would never hear either party talk about the 1st Amendment or really any of the other Amendments in this fashion. But the 2nd Amendment is treated like the red-headed step child of The Bill of Rights even by some Republicans.

Switzerland has literally implemented a similar right and responsibility by the citizens in a far more intelligent way that makes it part of a citizen's civic duty rather than let gun companies and gun hobbyists hijack the idea behind a 2nd Amendment type of right. Their gun homicide and crime rates are as low as other 1st world nations.

The inaction and handling of all of this by our political parties is one of the stupidest things I've seen in my lifetime.

[Aseahawkfan]

I wasn't aware of that. At least it alleviates one of my suspicions.

There was at least one act of incompetence. The 911 dispatcher, even though she had heard gunfire in the background, told a student that was inside the classroom and in hiding to keep talking to her, which she did, and the gunman heard her and it prompted him to shoot her dead.

It is fortunate the border patrol officers went in. That police chief was a coward or an idiot. You never allow children to remain in an area with some psycho without moving in immediately. I'm glad the Federal officers went in and handled the scum.

It's sounding like a lot of incompetence. That don't fly too well in Texas. If they find out definitively that police chief acted in a cowardly and incompetent fashion, he is unlikely to last long. Texans don't like that kind of behavior. The border patrol officers acted far more like I expect Texans to act in that situation. You get a call for a shooting. You go in and you drop the bastard. Then you sort out the rest.

[MackStrongIsMyHero]

Now the Uvalde police and school security are refusing to cooperate with the investigation anymore. Not a good look.

[I-5]

Yup, keep the 2nd Amendment and simply ban AR's. Who would have a problem with that?

If only it were that simple.

It was literally that simple in both Australia and the UK after massacres in each country. But I fully realize Americans are a whole different breed. No amount of innocently slaughtered children will ever change that.

Better than me saying it, listen to this longtime and current NRA member say it:

https://youtu.be/lh-_goh-Zmw

[MackStrongIsMyHero]

You might get more out of what you want if you don’t say “Ban AR’s”. The AR-15 is just one of many semi-automatic rifles on the market chambered for the 0.22 caliber rifle cartridge.

Edit: you may also be using AR to mean “assault rifle”; this also limits your scope as many semi-automatic rifles are not considered assault rifles.

[Aseahawkfan]

You might get more out of what you want if you don’t say “Ban AR’s”. The AR-15 is just one of many semi-automatic rifles on the market chambered for the 0.22 caliber rifle cartridge.

Edit: you may also be using AR to mean “assault rifle”; this also limits your scope as many semi-automatic rifles are not considered assault rifles.

I still remember the ban on assault weapons back in Clinton's presidency. I remember running to the store to buy an assault rifle just prior to the ban, then ending up with a short-barrel shotgun and a 38 as the gun store owner talked me into a better home defense system. I should have just bought the FN FAL, but oh well. During the Clinton assault weapons ban, the gun companies renamed some of the guns, complied with the Federal laws, then sold kits to turn the weapons back into semi-automatic weapons. It was overall an ineffective ban.

Bans on assault rifles and such in the United States are almost a non-starter. There are too many Americans who don't feel they should have to give up their arms because of a handful of psychopaths. I agree with them myself. If 99.99999999999999999999999999% of people are responsible gun owners, you don't punish them to stop criminals. We are not a nation of mob rules like Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, and really most of the world. Nowhere in the world are individual rights viewed as they are in America where you don't punish the group for the actions of another individual.

A ban is almost a non-starter. I even see a younger generation of gun owners building that don't want to give up their right to own weapons. Some of these younger men see gun ownership as an act of masculinity. I sort of understand it as the modern world is pretty stifling to young men. If I had to grow up with the words "toxic masculinity' tossed around all the time, I'd be tired of hearing it by now.

I think they're going to have to come up with alternatives to outright bans as they are politically not likely to happen or be effective in a nation that owns this many weapons and views government denial of rights as a call to resist.

[MackStrongIsMyHero]

I'm not advocating for it either, and, in Australia, it isn't an out-and-out ban. You have to get a license and "for home defense" isn't a good enough reason. They've made it very difficult to get a license to own a semi-automatic rifle.

There is a distinction assigned to assault rifles. They are typically selective fire: semi-automatic or burst fire (3 rounds per trigger pull).

Ruger makes a very popular semi-automatic rifle that fires the same round as the AR-15, but doesn't get near the same amount of attention. When I hear "ban assault rifles!", I don't think a lot of them realize what they are leaving out.

Semi-automatic also includes battle rifles like you mentioned (FN-FAL). Full size rifle rounds (0.30 caliber) fired in succession. This would include the old WW2 M1 Garand and the M14 of the late 50's. Very destructive and much harder to control (i.e. fire accurately), which I'm guessing is why these shooters don't go for them.

And I agree that 99.9% of gun owners aren't the problem, but that doesn't help when children die to a mad gunman with a semi-automatic rifle like at Sandy Hook and Uvalde. I think something is going to have to give.

[Aseahawkfan]

I'm not advocating for it either, and, in Australia, it isn't an out-and-out ban. You have to get a license and "for home defense" isn't a good enough reason. They've made it very difficult to get a license to own a semi-automatic rifle.

There is a distinction assigned to assault rifles. They are typically selective fire: semi-automatic or burst fire (3 rounds per trigger pull).

Ruger makes a very popular semi-automatic rifle that fires the same round as the AR-15, but doesn't get near the same amount of attention. When I hear "ban assault rifles!", I don't think a lot of them realize what they are leaving out.

Semi-automatic also includes battle rifles like you mentioned (FN-FAL). Full size rifle rounds (0.30 caliber) fired in succession. This would include the old WW2 M1 Garand and the M14 of the late 50's. Very destructive and much harder to control (i.e. fire accurately), which I'm guessing is why these shooters don't go for them.

And I agree that 99.9% of gun owners aren't the problem, but that doesn't help when children die to a mad gunman with a semi-automatic rifle like at Sandy Hook and Uvalde. I think something is going to have to give.

They should have done something years ago to prevent people with mental health issues from getting ahold of weapons and slowing the easy access to weapons. I'm still shocked they don't require background checks at gun shows. And a kid buying a couple of assault rifles on his 18th birthday and a bunch of rounds is exactly the kind of behavior that should raise a red flag. The kid can't even drink yet, but he's able to buy a few assault rifles and a ton of rounds. Makes total sense.

I don't get how America has let the gun hobbyists and gun companies take over the gun culture of the nation to create this weird culture that won't allow reasonable checks on arm sales.

I was never allowed to be around guns as a kid without adult supervision. It seems like some of these kids are getting their introduction to guns from Youtube or some other medium rather than learning from family members who also teach the safety and responsibility aspect of gun ownership. Honestly, I feel like this is more symptomatic of the family culture or lack thereof being fostered in America. Almost all these killers are males from broken homes, often being raised by a female or some male with a personality or mental disorder. Seems pretty rare I've seen any of these killers form two parent households with a quality father present. It seems like America has created a very strange family culture breeding a lot of angry, disaffected young males prone to a lot of harmful issues and this is the worst one of them. It's not just these mass shootings, but the school shootings and gang culture and so much else that seems to stem from a broken home, no father figure, and poverty or other isolation issues. Combine that with easy access to weapons and Youtube videos showing tough males using guns and you get a toxic cocktail spawning this strange American cultural element.

That is my mostly pop culture view on some of this and a general recall of so many of profiles of these lone wolf mass shooters. Predominantly male (I can't recall a single female mass shooter), often with mental issues or from a broken home with no father, and living an isolated or virtual life with not much social interaction. This modern world is so much different from the one I grew up in I barely know how to interact with these younger folk attached to their computers and phones worse than I was ever attached to a TV. Most of their social interactions seem to be over phone or the computer. Just a weird world now.

[I-5]

Thanks Mack...what I meant by 'ban AR' is probably better described by someone knowledgeable like you as the kind of weapon that can kill a lot of people very quickly. What kind of guns or accessories would fit that description?

I just read about a Florida gun law championed by Republicans that has resulted in over 8,000 firearms from individuals who have been red-flagged. This sounds great to me. We need more of this:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/01/politics/florida-red-flag-law/index.html

[MackStrongIsMyHero]

I don't know all that is out there, but there are many semi-automatic rifles that don't look like assault rifles or AR15's. Ruger makes a very popular one that has been copied by multiple gun manufacturers. The point is the focus should be on the functional terms "semi-automatic" "high capacity".

I don't have an issue with the Florida law. Nothing wrong with vetting people for gun ownership and flagging for mental illness should be mandatory.

[RiverDog]

We will never agree on this. The only way to check the military power of government is an armed populace. I have read enough history to know there is likely never to be a time when this is not the case. No laws or anything of the kind will do it if those in charge of the government turn the power of the military and police on the people. Not voting. Not words. Nothing will prevent the tyranny from such action except armed resistance. The 2nd Amendment made it into the Constitution as a political right to check the power of the government's military and police power, so that Americans would have the means to fight back against such encroachment should it be necessary.

The Founders weren't in agreement on many of the rights. Some didn't even want a Bill of Rights. Doesn't change that the Bill of Rights had enough support to be included. Citizens should have clear rights to defend themselves from government overreach and tyrannical behavior.

Yes. George Washington supported a Standing Army. Any student of history knows that competition between nation states requires a modern standing army. Just as any student of history knows the only check against a standing army is an armed citizenry. Both the standing army and the armed citizenry must coexist to maintain liberty.

Which is my point. Our founders were not in complete agreement when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were enacted, and certainly not on the need for the 2nd Amendment. It was a typical decision by a committee, full of compromises and concessions, the "I'll vote for your amendment if you vote for mine" horse trading negotiations. They had to engage in a give and take if they wanted a unified country that could live under one set of laws. There is no clear, concise vision held by the Founding Fathers, at least not on this matter. Therefore, to say that the Founding Fathers did not want a standing army for fear of it being manipulated by a repressive government and henceforth gave us the 2nd Amendment is false. They gave us the 2nd because it was one of the compromises that the group of 55 had to make if they were going to get everybody on board.

We don't have an armed populous, not compared to what the military considers as being 'armed.' Even if everyone owned an AR-15, they'd be spit wads compared to tanks and helicopters. That's the difference between today's army and what armies were like in the 1700's. There wasn't near the difference in the quality of arms back then.

[RiverDog]

Yup, keep the 2nd Amendment and simply ban AR's. Who would have a problem with that?

If only it were that simple.

It was literally that simple in both Australia and the UK after massacres in each country. But I fully realize Americans are a whole different breed. No amount of innocently slaughtered children will ever change that.

It's not just a matter of us Americans being a different breed. The biggest problem is in our Constitution. The bar for changing it is way too high. It requires 2/3's of Congress and 2/3's of the states to change or amend it. Only on procedural, apolitical things, like a line of succession to the POTUS, have we been able to change it in the past 100 years, and there's never been a change or modification to the original Bill of Rights.

I'm not opposed to a ban on assault weapons. But we're kidding ourselves if we think it's going to change anything. We've had assault weapons readily available in the 1960's, but we never had any mass shootings. In my readings on the JFK assassination, on the same page in the catalog LHO ordered his murder weapon, an M1 Garrand, the standard service semi automatic rifle in WW2 and Korea that could fire at a rate of 40-50 rounds a minute, was available for mail order purchase for about $40. Something else is at work. Our society has changed.

We need to start looking at the root cause. The availability of assault weapons is not what's driving the shootings.

[MackStrongIsMyHero]

River, a few things:

1. If you’re argument is that we don’t know for certain what they really meant, then it’s equally uncertain whether or not they didn’t not understand that technology would continue to make weapons more destructive. I think it’s unlikely they weren’t aware that weapons and fire arms would evolve; they already saw how gunpowder replaced heavy personal armor and melee weapons as the arbiters on the battle field. So, the weaponry of the time is no better an indicator of what they meant the amendment to encompass.

2. I think you’re limiting your scope to a pitched battle. Irregular guerilla forces can cause all sorts of problems for a modern army by avoiding a pitched battle. The partisans of occupied Europe in WW2, the Viet Cong, the Mujahadeen, and the Taliban can attest to that. Good luck doing that at all without semi-automatic firearms.

[MackStrongIsMyHero]

I’ll reiterate that Australia does not have a ban. They have a very restrictive licensing law. It is very difficult to get a license for any firearm there.

And, I don’t know if you have fired a Garand, but it fires full size .30-06 rifle rounds. They have a ton of power behind them and it would be very difficult to reach the fire rate you mention without a lot of training and even then very difficult to put those rounds on target.

Agreed there is something at the root of it all. Aseahawkdan already touched on it. The most recent shooters involve single disturbed males or males raised without a father and they usually have major issues meshing with society. The VaTech shooter, Dylan Roof, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and now Uvalde. And older one was the Thurston Highschool shooting by Kipland Kinkel. He exhibited major mental issues that his parents were fully aware of yet his father bought him a semi automatic rifle (a Ruger at that) because it was one of the few things his son showed interest in and could settled down and pay attention to. I’m sure as parent it is difficult to watch your child struggle with things that should normal and then try to lean into at least something your child can successfully do, but this was the fatal error. Kip’s parents paid for it with their lives and the lives of several students.

All that to say there has to be hyper awareness to mental health issues when guns are involved. Not sure how to integrate that but it seems it could be key to the solution. And parents, for god’s sake, keep your guns locked up and away from children.

[c_hawkbob]

I'm not opposed to a ban on assault weapons. But we're kidding ourselves if we think it's going to change anything.

Nonsense. During the 1994 assault weapons ban, even though it "grandfathered in" previously sold weapons and high capacity magazines, saw a significant downturn in mass shootings, whereas the death toll from mass shootings went from an average of 4.8 per year during the ban years to an average of 23.8 per year in the decade afterwards.

If the Ban had been allowed to remain in place we would be in a much better place than we are currently with the massive buying spree that has occurred since they all became legal again.

[RiverDog]

I'm not opposed to a ban on assault weapons. But we're kidding ourselves if we think it's going to change anything.

Nonsense. During the 1994 assault weapons ban, even though it "grandfathered in" previously sold weapons and high capacity magazines, saw a significant downturn in mass shootings, whereas the death toll from mass shootings went from an average of 4.8 per year during the ban years to an average of 23.8 per year in the decade afterwards.

If the Ban had been allowed to remain in place we would be in a much better place than we are currently with the massive buying spree that has occurred since they all became legal again.

That's highly debatable and by no means an accepted fact. From that pro NRA publication the Washington Post:

In 2013, we gave (Bill) Clinton Three Pinocchios for incorrectly claiming “half of all mass killings in the United States have occurred since the assault weapons ban expired in 2005, half of all of them in the history of the country.” But here, his claim is a bit more nuanced — that there was “big drop” in mass-shooting deaths during the ban, and then deaths rose after it expired.

Is this claim more credible? Let’s take a look.

Angel Urena, Clinton’s spokesman, was quick to supply the source of his claim — a paper published in January in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery.

(We should note there is no standard definition of a mass shooting, though the study relied on four or more deaths, not counting the shooter. Contrary to popular perception, there is no FBI definition of a mass shooting, though the FBI defines a mass murderer as someone who kills four or more people.)

The authors, led by Charles DiMaggio, a professor of surgery at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, studied mass-shooting data from 1981 to 2017 that were common to three open-source sets of data. They concluded that assault rifles accounted for 430, or 85.8 percent, of the 501 mass-shooting fatalities reported in 44 incidents but that there were nine fewer mass shooting-related deaths per 10,000 homicides during the federal ban period. Assuming the calculations were correct, the authors said an assault weapons ban would have prevented 314 of the 448, or 70 percent, of the mass-shooting deaths during the years when the ban was not in effect.

That’s an interesting finding, but the study has been disputed. In a letter published by the journal, Louis Klarevas, a research professor at Teachers College of Columbia University, said the “authors misidentified the involvement of assault weapons in roughly half of the incidents.” He wrote that “when the erroneous cases are recalibrated, the number of incidents involving assault weapons drops 62 percent from 34 to 13, and the number of fatalities resulting from such shootings drops 46 percent from 430 to 232.” He also said one incident did not qualify for inclusion because it involved three shooting deaths, not four.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... ng-deaths/

[c_hawkbob]

4.8 per year during the ban years to an average of 23.8 per year in the decade afterwards.

That is fact. Period. I don't care how they want to "adjust" for this or that individual criteria, the raw, basic numbers still 'are what they are'.

[Aseahawkfan]

Which is my point. Our founders were not in complete agreement when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were enacted, and certainly not on the need for the 2nd Amendment. It was a typical decision by a committee, full of compromises and concessions, the "I'll vote for your amendment if you vote for mine" horse trading negotiations. They had to engage in a give and take if they wanted a unified country that could live under one set of laws. There is no clear, concise vision held by the Founding Fathers, at least not on this matter. Therefore, to say that the Founding Fathers did not want a standing army for fear of it being manipulated by a repressive government and henceforth gave us the 2nd Amendment is false. They gave us the 2nd because it was one of the compromises that the group of 55 had to make if they were going to get everybody on board.

We don't have an armed populous, not compared to what the military considers as being 'armed.' Even if everyone owned an AR-15, they'd be spit wads compared to tanks and helicopters. That's the difference between today's army and what armies were like in the 1700's. There wasn't near the difference in the quality of arms back then.

The Founding Fathers knew a standing army was inevitable. You are the one implying that the Founders created the 2nd Amendment as a means to have an easy army to call up. That is not why it was created.

A sufficient number of The Founders voted to include the amendment. And not some tack on Amendment like the 11th Amendment or something like that. But The 2nd Amendment as in high up in the priority list. You keep making it sound like The 2nd Amendment was some negotiated afterthought. It most certainly was not. It was number 2 after free speech, assembly, and freedom of religion. That means it was pretty damn important to a lot of the Founders present to be put in that position. Thus it must have had a great deal of support by The Founders present. The Bill of Rights has a clear purpose: to check government power. The 2nd Amendment is part of that. A very important part.

We do have an armed populace even to the military. I've heard this argument a thousand plus time. It's a completely unfounded argument. This is like the difference between your understanding of Kennedy and my understanding of Kennedy. That is how wide a difference we have on our understanding of the 2nd Amendment and warfare. You seem to have studied warfare not at all. Whereas I could cite a plethora of information that a population with access to only assault rifles is sufficient to defeat a standing army with tanks and air power. And has done so before like the Afghani Taliban waiting for America to leave recently and holding a strong position with primarily assault rifles and homemade IEDs. The same can be said for when the Vietcong primarily fought the American military using guerilla tactics and cheap assault rifles, traps, and IEDs.

If I thought the assault rifle were not enough to maintain parity, I would support additional armaments for the American people. But it is sufficient. The current standing army of America is about 500,000 people not including reserve troops. If there were an American revolt or Civil war, even 1% of the population would be a guerilla army of about 3.3 million people revolting. If 5% revolted, we're talking 15 to 16 million people operating within America against what would not likely be the combined military as they would be unable to maintain any kind of stable front or focus military power anywhere as the incursion would be a guerilla war.

Automatic weapons are not required because automatic weapons are for a specific purpose in warfare situations, not for standard use. Which is why I don't believe Americans need an automatic setting on assault rifles. A soldier using an AR is taught to fire single shot or 3 round bursts for accuracy and ammo preservation reasons. Automatic weapons drain ammo, are inaccurate unless used against a massed enemy, and are primarily used for suppressive fire or against massed enemies to disperse them. A guerilla army would have the same needs to preserve ammo in a prolonged revolution. They would be just fine launching guerilla attacks to knock out power, move quickly carrying only small arms, and maintain an extremely effective guerilla operation against The Federal government should it be necessary.

The big fancy weapons of the United States military work great if you have a massed enemy using similar weapons. Not so much if you have a constant guerilla war within a nation where you can't tell friend from enemy. Thus the 2nd Amendment is still a highly effective check on government power as an armed populace is the best way to ensure The Federal government must respect the liberty of the people.

I can tell this is not one of the American liberties you spend much time on. I can also tell you think of 2nd Amendment activists in a negative manner. You are probably not particularly comfortable around weapons. That's fine. That's modern America. A bunch of people benefiting from the decisions made for them a long time ago that many don't want to have responsibility for nowadays because they think they will never need to defend their freedom with warfare. It's all done for them by The Federal government using the standing army. If America's army fell or was turned on the American people, not even sure what folks like you expect to happen after that. I guess you would just accept the yoke rather than fight back. I can't imagine what you would do against a real tyrant with no interest in respecting your speech, vote, or any non-violent action against them. But I don't imagine you'll have to consider it before your life ends.

But I do not agree with your stances. They are not well-supported. It sounds like you want to get rid of a right because you yourself have no interest in exercising it should it be necessary to do so and are content to believe that modern America will never again experience violent tyranny from within or outside. I do not agree as I believe rights are there for when they will be needed. The 2nd Amendment is no different than the 1st or any of the others. The majority of the time you can speak quite freely. But when you can't, the right is there to protect you. It is the same with weapons. Vast majority of the time you should not need them. But when you do, you have them protected by the 2nd Amendment.

[Aseahawkfan]

Nonsense. During the 1994 assault weapons ban, even though it "grandfathered in" previously sold weapons and high capacity magazines, saw a significant downturn in mass shootings, whereas the death toll from mass shootings went from an average of 4.8 per year during the ban years to an average of 23.8 per year in the decade afterwards.

If the Ban had been allowed to remain in place we would be in a much better place than we are currently with the massive buying spree that has occurred since they all became legal again.

This is the kind of crap I don't get. We have this information listed clearly in so many areas. There has not been 23.8 mass shootings of the kind we recently saw a year since the 2005 expiration. Here is a compiled Wiki List of notable mass shootings. I don't see a single year of 23.8 with the closest being 22 in 2017.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States

Homicide rate in the United States. We've seen a drop in homicides since the 90s. https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/murder-homicide-rate

Why would the Dems lie about something? All it does it make it easy to prove the person wrong and make the Democrats look like they are full of it. What does that even accomplish? Further division and nothing getting done because it was so easy to prove the Democrats are lying? How do you get some truthful discussion when people engage in data manipulation to push their point. And yeah, I know the Republicans do it too.

The reality is they only started defining and tracking mass shootings more recently in data. They are now including something like some guy using a pistol to shoot himself and his family in their house. That is not the type of mass shooting using an assault rifle and like we saw in Uvalde or other major shootings.

Why are we not exploring why these are so prevalent in the last two decades? This crap was not anywhere near this bad until the last few decades even when we had access to weapons. What is making modern males go off the rails like this? Because this is primarily a male issue and people are acting like it's just an issue we can discuss without asking the question, "Why are modern males in the last two decades losing their damn minds like this?" What is making this happen? Why are males focusing such hate on their fellow citizens? What's going on with this?

I can't think of a single female mass shooter. It is almost always some male doing this. Just unleashing their hate on a population using a gun ambushing them to kill as many people as possible before they die. It's like they are committing suicide by mass shooting with no real interest in their survival. They are basically saying my life is over, so I'm going to take as many of you with me as possible.

How are we breeding such insanely evil males? Hard to fathom.

[c_hawkbob]

First, the statistic is death rate, second, a "mass shooting" is defined as 4 or more people being shot, and it is applied to both statistical time frames equally.

[RiverDog]

4.8 per year during the ban years to an average of 23.8 per year in the decade afterwards.

That is fact. Period. I don't care how they want to "adjust" for this or that individual criteria, the raw, basic numbers still 'are what they are'.

Alright, I'll accept that. However, raw basic numbers don't tell us a lot unless you can use them in some sort of context.

Here's some more raw basic numbers that 'are what they are'. The homicide rate in the US, which represents far more deaths and includes mass shootings, had already begun a sharp decline before Clinton signed the ban. It went from a high of 9.45 per 100K in 1991, three years before the ban was signed into law in Sept. of 1994 (not sure when it took effect) until it bottomed out at 4.44 in 2014.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/U ... icide-rate

Since the homicide rate went down within the same period of time the assault weapons ban was in effect, especially when it involved a long, sharp decline, half of what it was at its peak and a decline stretched over nearly a quarter century, how do we know that the decline in mass shootings wasn't part of a general downward trend in homicides that had nothing to do with the assault weapons ban?

[RiverDog]

Here's something else to think about regarding this specific crime in Uvalde. How long was the shooter in a confined space with scores of elementary children before LE engaged him? 40 minutes or so? Do you honestly think that he needed an AR-15 to kill 19 little kids and 2 adults in 40 minutes? He could have done the job with my single shot 16 gauge shotgun.

Had this kid not been able to legally purchase an AR-15, it is very likely that he would either obtained one illegally or chosen some other weapon that he had access to. The only difference might have been that had LE known that the shooter was armed with a .45 revolver instead of an assault rifle, they may have been more willing to breach the classroom immediately rather than wait around for the SWAT team and body armor.

I'm not against an assault weapons ban. I personally think that there is no justifiable reason for any citizen to own a military style weapon, that the only legitimate reasons for owning a firearm is for personal security and recreational purposes, ie hunting and target shooting. But there is no solid, irrefutable evidence that such a ban would have or will prevent crimes of this nature from occurring. All it will do is satisfy the understandable urge that we do something....along with giving the Democrats a huge campaign issue to take voter's minds off the economy.

[Aseahawkfan]

I want to add some experience to the assault weapons ban of 1994.

The assault weapons ban was part of an overall anti-crime legislation known as the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Act. The purpose of this legislation was not necessarily to cut down on mass shootings like we're seeing today as to cut down on the gang violence that was occurring during that time period. Back in the 80s and 90s gang violence was a big political topic. You saw a ton of movies about it. There was a lot national discussion. People were more worried about drive bys and gang warfare than mass shootings of the nature we see right now.

There were some mass shootings at the time including a term known as "Going Postal" due to some mass shooting incidents by postal workers. But some of the bigger school shootings occurred after the 1994 ban went into effect in like the Columbine Massacre in 1999. The crime bill had an overall positive effect on reducing gang violence which was a major driver of the homicide rate prior to the introduction of this bill. But that did not have much to do with the type of mass shootings we're dealing with right now.

I recall that time as I was a teen in the 80s. A lot of people even in Washington State liked imagining themselves as part of a gang or as a gang tough guy. It was as they say in vogue to come from the "hood" or the "streets." I remember some of the kids I hung around with claiming to be from gangs from Everett. I thought that was laughable, but apparently Everett did have some gang issues and the Everett police used to keep gang lists and track names. I had my name taken and put on some list after hanging out in front of a 7 11 with my buddy of African descent. Obviously a lot of the gang enforcement was directed towards people of African and Latin descent because they are more often associated with gang membership. So it was often guilt by association back then even though my buddy had nothing to do with gangs unless players of Dungeons and Dragons were considered a gang. This was prior to the 1994 crime legislation.

When the 1994 crime legislation was coming out with the assault weapons ban, I was more into gun culture. Which is why I know the 1994 ban was mostly a sham or a soft ban. I was in my early 20s by that time. I was hanging out with some buddies who were into guns and motorbikes. Get your Harley, your leather jacket, and an assault rifle and pistol collection so you're a modern day Cowboy on a steel horse. It was that biker and biker wannabe subculture. It wasn't really Republican or Democrat so much as guys that like guns and bikes. I also had buddies who liked to shoot for fun. We had a local pistol range we could go to shoot. We would rent a favorite pistol, buy ammo, and shoot. One of my buddies had his dad's old .357 State Patrol service revolver as the State Patrol had apparently moved to the Beretta 9mm, a gun popularized by Martin Riggs in the Lethal Weapon series including the old West gunman type shooting style Riggs employed. So a lot the gun crowd wanted to be able to rapid fire a semiauto pistol like Riggs, so that is what you did at the range.

When that ban came out all my buddies were telling me I had to get an assault rifle before they were banned. That is when I settled on the FN FAL assault rifle. It was a German designed weapon apparently. I ended up getting the 12 gauge short barrel and a 38 snub as the gun salesman talked me into it as a better home defense system as I stated earlier. It also turned out the concerns about an assault weapon and high magazine capacity ban were mostly overblown. Gun companies redesigned weapons with smaller magazines or removed the banned features, then sold kits that allowed the guns to be modifed back to their original form after sale. There were a ton of loopholes in the assault weapons ban including the fact that everyone who had bought assault weapons prior to the ban kept their weapons and high capacity magazines. These same folks would sell them in private transactions and there was little way to track the sale of high capacity magazines with private sellers, so it encouraged a whole lot of private sales of guns and associated parts in private transactions not tracked by the government. Sales of stripped down versions of ARs and other assault rifles were sold with kits that allowed you to add back the pistol handle and the other parts that are prohibited from sale, but not prohibited from modification apparently. This is why I see the assault weapons ban as largely a farce because there was still a thriving community of gun owners buying and selling on the private market as well as tons of gun owners who bought kits to assemble an assault rifle equivalent at home and modify back to semiauto. There was insufficient enforcement of the assault weapons ban.

On top of this many states have had even more restrictive arms ownership laws in place for years. Illinois is a prime example of a state with more restrictive gun laws that don't actually reduce violence. Washington State, a blue state, has had open gun laws for a long time and you don't often hear of Washington State as high on the homicide list.

What am I getting at? Laws are only one aspect of the problem we have with violence in America. America has always had a much higher violent crime rate than other 1st world nations historically. I've always told people America is not a nice country. We are not raised to be particularly nice people. We are culturally encouraged to settle disputes and situations with violence. We glorify people who settle matters with violence whether the gun toting Dirty Harry type of cop, the Scarface or Godfather like gangster, the vengeful minded father murdering people who have harmed his family, the Old West Outlaw or Lawman using his six shooter to solve problems, or the ex-soldier cleaning up his community. America glorifies violence and has for a long time.

Though when I was growing up and I'm sure most of the old timers can relate, mass shootings of the kind we're seeing right now we're not a thing. I think the first mass shooting that became a real part of the national narrative were the postal shootings in the mid 80s. That made the news and was a big deal. The first major publicized school shooting was 1999 in Columbine. That seemed to mark a big change in the psychotic nature of these crimes. From there it has kept getting worse. It's like these lunatics are trying to top the last mass shooter in body county or the level of vileness of the crime.

I thought the government would have done something after Sandy Hook as that was the most insane crime that has occurred in my life that wasn't a mass bombing or some act by a serial killer. I don't even know what goes through someone's mind to want to massacre four year olds and I don't even want to know. Now this Uvalde killer is just another mad person crawling out of the woodwork mass murdering children. We know this occurred also in Norway where Brevik mass murdered children. Norway's occurrences are much lower than ours. But what possesses someone to want to mass murder children. It's hard to fathom. You almost imagine them as possessed because it's very hard to imagine a human reason to murder children.

What do you do when you're producing this many lunatics? How do you get control and redirect your culture? We definitely need to address some of the cultural elements and mental health issues on top of gun control measures to try to catch these lunatics before they crawl out of whatever hole they live in and decide to commit suicide by mass murder. This is really what this is even though they aren't naming it this yet. These men are in essence saying "My life is over and I'm going to inflict as much pain and suffering as I can before I go out." The only reason Brevik is alive is because the Norwegian people have some really strange tolerance for trying to reform a violent psychopath. I'm not even sure Brevik expected to be alive, but maybe.

We need to focus on stopping suicide by mass murder. Because that is what these sick males are doing. There has got to be a way to track these people as they descend into madness. We need to figure out how to do that.

Some of these Red Flag laws look supportable. I hope they get implemented nation wide to take guns away from loons.

The Violent Crime Bill of 1994 including the assault weapons ban had bipartisan support with former Republican Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan supporting the bill. Be nice to see some real bipartisan support for sweeping reforms to stop these kinds of mass shootings. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-05-05-mn-54185-story.html At the time the primary concern was gangs and that gang culture, today we need to focus on measures to stop suicide by mass murder that seems to be a major component of these types of events. These people are like suicide bombers using a gun instead of a bomb. They don't care if they live. They just want to murder as many of their targets as possible before they die or are locked up for life.

[RiverDog]

What am I getting at? Laws are only one aspect of the problem we have with violence in America. America has always had a much higher violent crime rate than other 1st world nations historically. I've always told people America is not a nice country. We are not raised to be particularly nice people. We are culturally encouraged to settle disputes and situations with violence. We glorify people who settle matters with violence whether the gun toting Dirty Harry type of cop, the Scarface or Godfather like gangster, the vengeful minded father murdering people who have harmed his family, the Old West Outlaw or Lawman using his six shooter to solve problems, or the ex-soldier cleaning up his community. America glorifies violence and has for a long time.

I agree. That's what I meant when I said that the availability of military style assault rifles was not the root cause of the problem. They've been readily available at least since the end of WW2. The problem is with our society. Short of abolishing the 2nd Amendment and embarking on a nation wide disarmament campaign, passing more laws isn't going to stop the shootings. Unless and until society changes, we're always going to have incidents like we saw in Texas.

There was a theory that the violence in Hollywood and the video arcade games had a tendency to de-sensitize people, especially young people, to the taking of human life. That's how we came up with these meaningless movie and video ratings. I do feel that this might be part of the problem, that some people are subject to these reality disconnects that is enhanced by movies and videos with graphic violence.

Though when I was growing up and I'm sure most of the old timers can relate, mass shootings of the kind we're seeing right now we're not a thing. I think the first mass shooting that became a real part of the national narrative were the postal shootings in the mid 80s. That made the news and was a big deal. The first major publicized school shooting was 1999 in Columbine. That seemed to mark a big change in the psychotic nature of these crimes. From there it has kept getting worse. It's like these lunatics are trying to top the last mass shooter in body county or the level of vileness of the crime.

Moses Lake had a school shooting, at the junior high my daughter would later attend, back in 1996. It was the first one in the state if my memory is correct. The gunman was a 15 year old, armed with a hunting rifle and two hand guns. He shot and killed two students, critically wounded another, shot and killed his algebra teacher.

These indiscriminate shootings seem to wax and wane.

We need to focus on stopping suicide by mass murder. Because that is what these sick males are doing. There has got to be a way to track these people as they descend into madness. We need to figure out how to do that.

Some of these Red Flag laws look supportable. I hope they get implemented nation wide to take guns away from loons.

I'm good with that kind of legislation, too, but it doesn't seem very workable. How do you identify the loons? Who makes that call?

[Aseahawkfan]

I'm good with that kind of legislation, too, but it doesn't seem very workable. How do you identify the loons? Who makes that call?

Florida is using a judge to make the call. We should have a police force specifically set up to do it. Some people can take a little discomfort for possible accusations to prevent this kind of psychotic attack.

To be a little racial even though I don't much care for the color designation, if black people have had to deal with randomly getting checked for gang affiliation and put on gang lists, white people can tolerate some false accusations of being a possible mass shooter to prevent some of these mass shooting attacks. If these folks start talking crazy or sending messages, you got a line to call. Mass shooter hotline. Get on there, cops respond, check the situation, and see how real the threat is. If they have to take you into temporary custody, then they do. Better to be safe than sorry at this point.

Seems to me these things are becoming so unbelievably vile that we need to tolerate some inconvenience. It's one thing if some guy loses his crap and kills his High School girlfriend. It's a terrible crime, but at least you understand it. This wandering in from nowhere and killing random young school children. I don't even know where that kind of hate and insanity comes from. That's the kind of mental state I've only seen from child killers like Wesley Allen Dodd or Albert Fish.

I do recall some school shootings in Washington State as well, just not as big as Columbine which was the first really big one that caused a mass uproar and massive media coverage. I read over that list of mass shootings. Seems pistols are used more often than rifles, but rifles are used in the higher kill count mass shootings that seem planned or to target large groups of vulnerable people.

The world is getting crazy, Riverdog. I was reading on the Clinton Administration and that Anti-crime act and it was sponsored by Democrats and supported by cops back when the Democrats weren't the party of Defund the Police and turn the police into racist villains. They were actually doing something about the criminals and not trying so hard to appease a segment of their base at the expense of the police. Not sure what happened to that Democratic Party same as I don't know what happened to the Republican Party that believed in sane government, not following some crazy to the detriment of the nation. I miss those days.

[RiverDog]

I'm good with that kind of legislation, too, but it doesn't seem very workable. How do you identify the loons? Who makes that call?

Florida is using a judge to make the call. We should have a police force specifically set up to do it. Some people can take a little discomfort for possible accusations to prevent this kind of psychotic attack.

The judge might approve the call, but he's not the one that actually makes it. Most judges don't receive extensive training in psychiatric evaluation. They rely on an expert in the field. I see lots of holes in that system, both in loons slipping through the cracks and punishing people that aren't dangerous. There are a lot of people that just snap due to some traumatic event, a divorce, losing a job, or the death of a friend, a reaction that can't be anticipated. Unless we want to live in a police state with Big Brother watching our every move, these random acts are going to continue until society undergoes some sort of transformation.

To be a little racial even though I don't much care for the color designation, if black people have had to deal with randomly getting checked for gang affiliation and put on gang lists, white people can tolerate some false accusations of being a possible mass shooter to prevent some of these mass shooting attacks. If these folks start talking crazy or sending messages, you got a line to call. Mass shooter hotline. Get on there, cops respond, check the situation, and see how real the threat is. If they have to take you into temporary custody, then they do. Better to be safe than sorry at this point.

We've handicapped the police to such a degree that they can no longer be relied on to protect the public. I just read an article about how many people are refusing to stop for a common traffic violation that due to the new WA law, cops aren't allowed to pursue them unless they believe they've committed a crime. Some cops are saying that it happens once a shift. If we're going to start cracking down on the loons, then we're going to have to get over this urge by liberals to create a state of anarchy by passing these idiotic bills restricting the cops.

Seems to me these things are becoming so unbelievably vile that we need to tolerate some inconvenience. It's one thing if some guy loses his crap and kills his High School girlfriend. It's a terrible crime, but at least you understand it. This wandering in from nowhere and killing random young school children. I don't even know where that kind of hate and insanity comes from. That's the kind of mental state I've only seen from child killers like Wesley Allen Dodd or Albert Fish.

I do recall some school shootings in Washington State as well, just not as big as Columbine which was the first really big one that caused a mass uproar and massive media coverage. I read over that list of mass shootings. Seems pistols are used more often than rifles, but rifles are used in the higher kill count mass shootings that seem planned or to target large groups of vulnerable people.

The world is getting crazy, Riverdog. I was reading on the Clinton Administration and that Anti-crime act and it was sponsored by Democrats and supported by cops back when the Democrats weren't the party of Defund the Police and turn the police into racist villains. They were actually doing something about the criminals and not trying so hard to appease a segment of their base at the expense of the police. Not sure what happened to that Democratic Party same as I don't know what happened to the Republican Party that believed in sane government, not following some crazy to the detriment of the nation. I miss those days.

As demoralizing as it must be to be a cop, I can certainly see it having the effect of giving them an "I don't give a rip" attitude. Might as well just sit in the donut shop and flirt with the waitress until my shift is over. We can't have it both ways. We can't villainize all cops due the one out of twenty that might be racists or the Officer Tackleberry type then expect them to save us from a loner that unpredictably turns into a mass shooter. Especially in this job market, who in their right mind would want to go into law enforcement?

[Hawktawk]

I'm not advocating for it either, and, in Australia, it isn't an out-and-out ban. You have to get a license and "for home defense" isn't a good enough reason. They've made it very difficult to get a license to own a semi-automatic rifle.

There is a distinction assigned to assault rifles. They are typically selective fire: semi-automatic or burst fire (3 rounds per trigger pull).

Ruger makes a very popular semi-automatic rifle that fires the same round as the AR-15, but doesn't get near the same amount of attention. When I hear "ban assault rifles!", I don't think a lot of them realize what they are leaving out.

Semi-automatic also includes battle rifles like you mentioned (FN-FAL). Full size rifle rounds (0.30 caliber) fired in succession. This would include the old WW2 M1 Garand and the M14 of the late 50's. Very destructive and much harder to control (i.e. fire accurately), which I'm guessing is why these shooters don't go for them.

And I agree that 99.9% of gun owners aren't the problem, but that doesn't help when children die to a mad gunman with a semi-automatic rifle like at Sandy Hook and Uvalde. I think something is going to have to give.

This right here . I’m a lifelong gun owner who believes qualified trained psychologically stable people should be able to own guns . I don’t really care what type of gun this people own . But when you have a weapon of war , a point and click killing machine so deadly cops won’t take it on for the second time in a major shoot it’s all you need to know about the weapon . If you want one I need to know a lot more about you . For one thing you have to be 21 or active duty military you don’t get one . Something . Some sort of enhancement to your license to have one .

[RiverDog]

I'm not advocating for it either, and, in Australia, it isn't an out-and-out ban. You have to get a license and "for home defense" isn't a good enough reason. They've made it very difficult to get a license to own a semi-automatic rifle.

There is a distinction assigned to assault rifles. They are typically selective fire: semi-automatic or burst fire (3 rounds per trigger pull).

Ruger makes a very popular semi-automatic rifle that fires the same round as the AR-15, but doesn't get near the same amount of attention. When I hear "ban assault rifles!", I don't think a lot of them realize what they are leaving out.

Semi-automatic also includes battle rifles like you mentioned (FN-FAL). Full size rifle rounds (0.30 caliber) fired in succession. This would include the old WW2 M1 Garand and the M14 of the late 50's. Very destructive and much harder to control (i.e. fire accurately), which I'm guessing is why these shooters don't go for them.

And I agree that 99.9% of gun owners aren't the problem, but that doesn't help when children die to a mad gunman with a semi-automatic rifle like at Sandy Hook and Uvalde. I think something is going to have to give.

This right here . I’m a lifelong gun owner who believes qualified trained psychologically stable people should be able to own guns . I don’t really care what type of gun this people own . But when you have a weapon of war , a point and click killing machine so deadly cops won’t take it on for the second time in a major shoot it’s all you need to know about the weapon . If you want one I need to know a lot more about you . For one thing you have to be 21 or active duty military you don’t get one . Something . Some sort of enhancement to your license to have one .

You're going to have to be careful with the semi-automatic term. My 12 gauge shotgun is a semi-automatic.

I do care about what type of gun people own. I don't see the need for any individual, active duty military or otherwise, to own an AR-15. And there's nothing unique or qualifying about being an active duty member of the military. They've have been involved in mass shootings, too:

On November 5, 2009, tragedy struck the Fort Hood military base when a US Army major open fired on the base, killing 13 and injuring more than 30. Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who was not only an Army major, but a psychiatrist, was the gunman responsible for what would be the worst shooting to occur on an American military base.

https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-libra ... -shooting/

An officer and a psychiatrist. So you tell me, if someone like that can go postal, who can you trust? That demonstrates just how difficult it is to flag these individuals and restrict them from owning certain weapons. The only way you're going to stop it is to eliminate them entirely, something that's likely unconstitutional.

[Hawktawk]

I never said semi auto . I have a 3006 Remington 300 cannon . It takes 2 seconds to pull another accurate shot it kicks so hard . I’m referring to military style low recoil semi autos . I’m not advocating banning them either . I’m for an enhanced license to purchase one . Exhaustive background check . Nobody under 21 can have one unless they are law enforcement or active duty military . Give to get . But simply outlawing perhaps any semi auto weapon to under 21 would stop 9–10ths of it including the punk Rittenhouse . Why do we wait till 21 to be able to buy booze but at 18 we can buy a gun and shoot up a classroom ? Makes sense

[RiverDog]

I never said semi auto . I have a 3006 Remington 300 cannon . It takes 2 seconds to pull another accurate shot it kicks so hard . I’m referring to military style low recoil semi autos . I’m not advocating banning them either . I’m for an enhanced license to purchase one . Exhaustive background check . Nobody under 21 can have one unless they are law enforcement or active duty military . Give to get . But simply outlawing perhaps any semi auto weapon to under 21 would stop 9–10ths of it including the punk Rittenhouse . Why do we wait till 21 to be able to buy booze but at 18 we can buy a gun and shoot up a classroom ? Makes sense

I realize that you didn't say semi auto, but Mack did and you noted it in your response. Rather than semi automatic, a better limitation would be on round capacity.

Age restrictions are of little assurance. The Las Vegas shooter that murdered 60 was 64 years old.

Active duty military and LE should not have any special rights to gun ownership. They don't need an AR-15 when they are off duty. As was the case in the Fort Hood shooting, anyone can go postal. IMO no amount of vetting is going to assure us that those types of weapons aren't used in mass shootings. The only way to achieve that goal is to keep very strict control of them: Limit them to SWAT teams that keep them under lock and key with a validated accounting system until they are needed for training or use against an active shooter and certain military personnel that do likewise. They might even want to embed them with locator chips in the event they become lost or stolen. Treat them like we would keys to launch the missiles.

Eliminating 9/10th's isn't going to pacify people. It's like telling people that we can stop 90% of the nuclear missiles launched against us. All it takes is one incident where 20 or so get murdered, especially children, and the shock of it will cause everyone to be clamoring for more gun control laws.

All you're doing with your solution is nibbling around the edges. If you are serious about preventing these military style weapons from being used in mass shootings, then let's go big. Keep them out of everyone's hands.



.

[Aseahawkfan]

I realize that you didn't say semi auto, but Mack did and you noted it in your response. Rather than semi automatic, a better limitation would be on round capacity.

Age restrictions are of little assurance. The Las Vegas shooter that murdered 60 was 64 years old.

Active duty military and LE should not have any special rights to gun ownership. They don't need an AR-15 when they are off duty. As was the case in the Fort Hood shooting, anyone can go postal. IMO no amount of vetting is going to assure us that those types of weapons aren't used in mass shootings. The only way to achieve that goal is to keep very strict control of them: Limit them to SWAT teams that keep them under lock and key with a validated accounting system until they are needed for training or use against an active shooter and certain military personnel that do likewise. They might even want to embed them with locator chips in the event they become lost or stolen. Treat them like we would keys to launch the missiles.

Eliminating 9/10th's isn't going to pacify people. It's like telling people that we can stop 90% of the nuclear missiles launched against us. All it takes is one incident where 20 or so get murdered, especially children, and the shock of it will cause everyone to be clamoring for more gun control laws.

All you're doing with your solution is nibbling around the edges. If you are serious about preventing these military style weapons from being used in mass shootings, then let's go big. Keep them out of everyone's hands.



.

If the citizens of Switzerland can own military style assault rifles with as low a homicide crime rate as anywhere else, so can Americans. We should follow the Swiss model which is more 2nd Amendment like than what we currently practice in America.

I don't think you have to ban to seriously reduce. There is zero need for laws so loose an 18 year old kid can buy two ARs on his 18th birthday and a bunch of rounds in preparation for what turned out to be a massacre. You also don't need like what happened in Tulsa where a guy buys an assault rifle 3 hours before the shooting. That kind of legal looseness is just ridiculously stupid. I don't know how even gun advocates can think that is necessary.

I'm not with you on the "Go big." I really don't think it is necessary. I'm far more of put in place intelligently thought out policies and reforms, then see what happens and adjust as necessary. Right now some of the first and easiest would be waiting periods, more severe background checks, training, and raising the age to 21.

Read over the ridiculously lax gun laws in some of these cases. It's so stupid that even someone as supportive of the 2nd Amendment myself is saying, "What are you people even thinking? This is the height of stupid. Why are you allowing this? It is completely unnecessary and ridiculous." What kind of a nation won't sell beer and wine to an 18 year old but somehow thinks it's ok to sell two assault rifles to an 18 year old? Or allows a guy to buy an assault rifle so quickly that 3 hours later he is able to load it and go on a shooting rampage? That's just stupid. We can start off getting rid of some the exceedingly stupidly lax laws before you ramp up to a ban.

[RiverDog]

If the citizens of Switzerland can own military style assault rifles with as low a homicide crime rate as anywhere else, so can Americans. We should follow the Swiss model which is more 2nd Amendment like than what we currently practice in America.

Switzerland's population is 9 million. Ours is 330 million. Big difference. The United States is unlike any other country in the world. Things that work in Australia or Canada might not work here simply due to our size, diversity, and historical context.

If you could convince me that we would never have a situation where we have people storming the Capitol, taking over neighborhoods in major cities, or believing in whacky conspiracy theories about the Covid vaccine, then I'd be all for your proposal. But we have far too many loons.

But to be fair, my solution wouldn't work, either, as it would likely be declared unconstitutional. All I'm saying is that if you want to stop the use of assault weapons in mass shootings, you're going to have to ban anyone from owning or possessing one.

And like I told HT, "seriously reduce" isn't good enough. All it takes is one mass shooting and everyone will be crying for more legislation. Read the biography of Stephen Paddock, the shooter that killed 60 people from a Las Vegas high rise, and tell me how a background check, a waiting period, or an age restriction would have prevented that crime. Paddock's only previous encounter with LE was a minor traffic violation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Paddock

Read over the ridiculously lax gun laws in some of these cases. It's so stupid that even someone as supportive of the 2nd Amendment myself is saying, "What are you people even thinking? This is the height of stupid. Why are you allowing this? It is completely unnecessary and ridiculous." What kind of a nation won't sell beer and wine to an 18 year old but somehow thinks it's ok to sell two assault rifles to an 18 year old? Or allows a guy to buy an assault rifle so quickly that 3 hours later he is able to load it and go on a shooting rampage? That's just stupid. We can start off getting rid of some the exceedingly stupidly lax laws before you ramp up to a ban.

I agree completely. The reason why the gun laws are so stupid and poorly written is that the authors know that they are subject to 2nd Amendment challenges. I'm not even necessarily for my own proposal. All I'm saying is that if you want to stop...not reduce, but eliminate...the use of AR's in mass shootings, you're going to have to "go big." Otherwise, it will be wash, rinse, and repeat every 4 or 5 years and would not be accepted by the public. They'll always insist that we "do something."

[Aseahawkfan]

Switzerland's population is 9 million. Ours is 330 million. Big difference. The United States is unlike any other country in the world. Things that work in Australia or Canada might not work here simply due to our size, diversity, and historical context.

If you could convince me that we would never have a situation where we have people storming the Capitol, taking over neighborhoods in major cities, or believing in whacky conspiracy theories about the Covid vaccine, then I'd be all for your proposal. But we have far too many loons.

But to be fair, my solution wouldn't work, either, as it would likely be declared unconstitutional. All I'm saying is that if you want to stop the use of assault weapons in mass shootings, you're going to have to ban anyone from owning or possessing one.

And like I told HT, "seriously reduce" isn't good enough. All it takes is one mass shooting and everyone will be crying for more legislation. Read the biography of Stephen Paddock, the shooter that killed 60 people from a Las Vegas high rise, and tell me how a background check, a waiting period, or an age restriction would have prevented that crime. Paddock's only previous encounter with LE was a minor traffic violation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Paddock

The population argument is used far too often without even first trying the measures taken. We're always going to be a large nation. That is no reason not to try polices from smaller nations that may work on a larger scale. We made capitalism work well for a large population. We can make other polices work as well.

I agree completely. The reason why the gun laws are so stupid and poorly written is that the authors know that they are subject to 2nd Amendment challenges. I'm not even necessarily for my own proposal. All I'm saying is that if you want to stop...not reduce, but eliminate...the use of AR's in mass shootings, you're going to have to "go big." Otherwise, it will be wash, rinse, and repeat every 4 or 5 years and would not be accepted by the public. They'll always insist that we "do something."

There is a long history of gun control measures taken in regards to the 2nd Amendment. What I believe has happened is the gun hobbyists backed by gun company lobbyists have taken over the 2nd Amendment narrative distorting it substantially.

If you look up control, plenty of cities and even in frontier areas gun control was practiced by local law enforcement. Same as freedom of speech was also checked for acts like shouting fire in a theater.

Bigger problem is it seems the pro-gun and anti-gun groups like to immediately jump to bans and "you're taking our guns, 2nd Amendment" argument before trying some other measures first that would fall within the Constitutional test. Lots of gun laws out there. I think the bigger problem is the Democrats don't even want to mention the rhetoric surrounding the 2nd Amendment and how to intelligently implement that and the Republicans have no motivation to do so themselves as their voters don't care as long as they get to keep their guns. So we have no new conversation to be had. Just the same one over and over and over and over again which as you realize takes us nowhere.

Democrats need to take a new line of reasoning that includes acknowledging the 2nd Amendment purpose for inclusion in The Bill of Rights while discussing intelligent ways to implement a 2nd Amendment protection that isn't a straight up ban, claiming The Founders were a bunch of idiots that didn't see assault rifles would be made, and who wants to listen to a bunch of old slavers anyway so ban all the guns. That argument isn't working, never has and likely never will. Democrats need to show more respect for the nation's Founders and the intelligent design of the Constitutional protections of The Bill of Rights and spend less time focusing on The Founders flaws which doesn't suddenly make everything they did valueless. Republicans understand The Founders were far from perfect, but also appreciate greatly many the intelligent design of the Constitutional protections and the idea behind a nation of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." We would like to maintain these ideas, while adapting them to modern life.