If the NRA suddenly did not exist as of tomorrow, these shootings would still happen as the underlying psychotic motivations in evil people to slaughter would still exist. Gun control can help, but the mental illness still exists.
I usually blame the criminals for the crimes they commit, but that doesn't seem to fit the groupthink around here.
So if you're going to continue with the NRA fetish, (and I suspect you will) you should probably know that the gun industry's biggest lobbyist isn't the NRA, it's the NSSF. The National Shooting Sports Foundation.
If you're not going to blame the criminals, at least blame the right scapegoat.
@1: Wait, are they evil people, or are they mentally ill? Or (as I suspect), are those two things equivalent in your mind?
In any case, improved firearm regulation isn't about the total elimination of mental illness, or of violent crime. It is about harm reduction. There will always be mentally ill persons, or desperate persons, or, yes, just plain evil persons around. Given that fact, is it not logical to take steps to prevent such people from having easy access to weapons that can allow them to kill quickly and easily?
Yes, yes, knives, bats, bricks, bare fists, etc. etc. have all been used to kill, and to kill multiple people. But at the Sandy Hook / Columbine / Fort Hood / you name it end of the carnage scale, nothing compares to firearms.
Mental illness still exists - why are you not interested in helping ensure that heavily armed mental illness does not?
@3 Yes. The problem is mental illness + unrestricted, insufficiently regulated firearm access. The folks who insist we can only talk about those components separately (like @1) are part of the problem, because they stymie the appropriate discussion.
Evil and mentally ill are neither mutually exclusive nor equivalent. They're both potentially useful ways to define and therefore begin yo solve problems. And both are potential crutches for lazy minds to avoid solving anything.
Just as the catchall phrase "gun control" is the lazy mans way of appearing to, but not actually in any way accomplishing, the harm reduction of which you write.
Yeah! It says it right there in the 2nd amendment! "Over equipped, overweight middle managers being able to bag a deer being a core condition of happiness, the right to have and bear arms shall not be infringed upon".
Like claiming the felonious behavior of Bill Clinton was "just sex" (a new and intriguing definition for perjury and conspiracy to suborn witnesses in an ongoing civil matter) the bs about hunting is a lefty red herring.
#5
" Most gun control advocates don't have a problem w/ sporting firearms, it's the ones that are specifically designed for killing people that they want to restrict access to."
ALL gun control advocates fall into 2 camps: Those that are ignorant about the end goal of "Gun Control" and those that deliberately lie and obfuscate about the actual end goal i.e a complete prohibition (ah, that word has a familiar ring) on the ownership of any firearm by non-military and non-LE private citizens with special dispensations doled out to favored individuals.
This particular rag, and its hacks is too cowardly to just come out and state that, letting that position be taken up by others who at least have the honesty to state what they really want http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-l…
And please do school us on what a sporting firearm is vs one that is designed for killing people.
@4: All discussion is helpful. The problem are so-called pluralistic society loving self-proclaimed progressive liberals who want to restrict it to their flavor of what is "appropriate." You're smarter than that, Hernandez.
@5, California already has more restrictive gun control laws than most of the country. Including a magazine cap. Do you think any of that made any difference in this case? Do you think that if he had a 30rd magazine he would have magically killed more people? Do you think if he had been restricted to a 6round revolver he would have killed less? Can you make the case for ANY knife/gun/vehicle control law that would have made a difference in this case?
@9, Yet, the percentage of homicides made with a "medium caliber fully or semi-automatic rifle capable of accepting high capacity detachable box magazines" is miniscule. On average, in most states, it is far easier to obtain a rifle (bolt action or semi) than a handgun. Yet rifles, regardless of how scary they might be for you, are rarely used in homicides.
(2011: 6,220 handgun homicides versus 323 rifle - bolt action or semi, it isn't broken out - homicides.)
I think that what a lot of gun-control-nuts fail to realize is that there is a very limited amount of political capital available. When you waste your political capital on banning the 'Evil Black Rifle', and those 'Terrifying High Cap Magazines' you waste your time and have little, to no effect, on anything. Which just gives gun-nuts more "ammunition" to show how what you're doing is stupid.
@11 And the NRA and their allies (the gun-obsessed as @13 puts it) don't want to restrict it to their flavor of "appropriate"? That's, I guess, the problem I'm trying to get at. There's really no argument, from liberals or conservatives, that mental illness isn't a major component of massacres like this. But we have to talk about that in the context of the political push to keep our communities flooded with readily available firearms at all costs. The pro-gun lobby and the gun-obsessed citizens of the U.S. don't want to introduce that context into the discussion, because it might lead to different forms of gun control (which I see you acknowledge can help, and I apologize for not recognizing that in my previous comment).
@14 Lanza was shooting at young children packed into a school you idiot. He could have attacked with a couple kitchen knives and killed as many or more than Rodger.
@14, No, not really. the Connecticut shooting would have been much more effective with a shotgun. An 'Evil Black Rifle' is a poor choice for a classroom of kids. The capacity of his firearm was not relevant since 7 year olds were not exactly fighting back.
As far as the recent shooting goes, the shooter had 3 semi-automatic handguns. The fact that he only killed three people (including himself) with bullets had nothing to do with limits on his ammunition.
Regardless, mass killings are statistically insignificant and are not something that you are likely to prevent by banning X firearm.
Incidentally, media coverage and sensationalism and the continued use of killers names has probably contributed more to the ongoing problem than any laxity in gun control laws. The lure of instant fame is seductive for some.
@6: I'm not going to listen to the opinions regarding mental illness of a guy who thinks he knows better on the topic than the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association put together.
@7: That's funny. Whenever we bring up the phrase "well-regulated militia", you demand that we ignore the actual wording because freedumb.
@15: The difference is that, as is the case with swimming pools and cars, we regulate potential bomb-making materials for the sake of safety and security. For some reason it's considered taboo to investigate people who out-of-the-blue buy ten rifles, or to impose user-safety guidelines on firearms manufactured in this country.
Was there a mass killer that suddenly bought 10 rifles? I don't remember any that fit that bill, even assuming some overstatement. Lanza didn't buy any iirc, they belonged to his mom. Rodger bought 3 handguns one after another, not unusual for a sport shooter.
As for the regulation of bomb making materials, you can buy a variety in quantities appropriate for a Boston marathon type attack with less paperwork than buying a gun.
"@9 A medium caliber fully or semi-automatic rifle capable of accepting high capacity detachable box magazines is NOT a sporting firearm. It is a tool that has been carefully designed for the purpose of killing lots of people in a short time. A bad guy who gets his hands on such a weapon can do a lot more harm than a bad guy who has to make do with a break-open shotgun or a bolt action rifle."
First, do you have ANY idea how hard it is to get hold of a Full Auto weapon. How many have been used in multiple victim shootings?
Second, your comment "It is a tool that has been carefully designed for the purpose of killing lots of people in a short time"
Is that why an increasingly out of control police - refer to yesterday's story about Seattle cops affirming their continued right to beat the tar out of all of us - ALL ACROSS the nation carry semi-automatic AR-15s in the trunk of their patrol car? No? well how about full-sweet-jesus-it-sprays-800-bullets per-minute-Auto like these fucking clowns http://reason.com/blog/2014/05/16/why-th…
That's meat inspectors. Asking for military grade full-auto submachine guns.
323 deaths from rifles in 2011, out of a population of 317 million. Quite the irrational fixation you have there, no?
In terms of terrorist attack, bombs are the higher body count weapon. If you're arguing for the right of citizens to carry grenades around for self defense or something you might want to get off the internet and find a nice wacko militia compound to call home.
@20, Is an SUV really any more effective at picking up your groceries than a Honda Hatchback? Then why would it matter if we make some regulation that everyone has to own a compact car? (Please note that isn't really a fair comparison because there are some things you can do with an SUV that you can't do with a compact, but there is really nothing you can do with an 'Evil Black Rifle' that you can't do with, say, a Remington Model 750 semi-auto, not-evil-black rifle).
I believe that one of the biggest reasons why the 'Evil Black Rifle' is so popular is customization. I personally don't really understand it, but there are more options for customizing an AR than any other rifle. Incidentally, before the initial ban, AR's were not very popular rifles. I suspect that a lot of their initial popularity was directly due to the ban.
Ken Mehlman, don't you think racist swimming pools are a bigger problem?
Are you open to the suggestion that perhaps you and millions of infantilized others are manipulated at an emotional level into reacting irrationally against threats that are statistically non-existent?
@24 "the biggest reasons why the 'Evil Black Rifle' is so popular is"
Scaring the crap out of people who are scared of guns anyways. That's the most often cited reason among the people who have tacticool weapons when I go for target practice. /shrug
@26 "How often are military style assault weapons used in lawful self defense?"
Hopefully never. What does that have to do with a US citizens right to have one just in case?
"all else being equal, a bad guy w/ a break open shotgun is less dangerous than a bad guy w/ a military style assault rifle"
No. A crazed gunman could harm a lot of people with either weapon.
Tacticool weapons scare you. Try going out to a gun range that rents weapons or even just a gun store sometime and comparing the difference between a tacticool weapon and an unobjectionable wooden stock hunting rifle. All you'll find is that the black plastic covered rifle scares you more. That's it, that's the entirety of the difference between them.
#26
This is WAY beyond this-type-of-weapon-versus-that-type-of-weapon mate, just self-examine and answer this simple question:
Why are you fixated on remedies to a an occurrence - being shot by a crazy person with a semi-automatic rifle - that even the FBI's statistics show, accounts for 0.00010% of all deaths in 2011 - why does THAT animate you more than thousands of kids drowning in a pool every year?
#32
"Is it possible that I'm in favor of regulatory measures that would reduce the number of school children who die in drowning accident"
Really? I've just looked through your comment history and I'm drawing a blank finding any threads where you've been outspoken about The Swimming Pool Problem. I think if you'd had a fraction of the fervor about the Evul Black Rifles, you'd at least not been beaten to the punch about Evil Swiming Pools by an Unreformed Troglodyte like me.
Curiouser still, I can't find a single SLOG thread on Deadly Swimming Pools killing Black Kids disproportionally anywhere!
Why is that Ken? RACIST!
"AND in favor making rules that reduce the number of people killed by crazed gunmen"
Reduce the number from 323 which includes Bolt Action rifles, and which is less than the number of deaths BY FISTS in 2011?! Really?!
Again, I will ask you something that you pointedly avoid answering:
Why does this statistically minuscule - as a proportion of the population, not to take away from the tragedy and sorrow on an individual level - cause of death, animate you with such fervor and righteousness, where other much easier to overcome causes of death that take many, MANY more lives do not? WHY IS THAT KEN?
@21: David Lewisbey and Levaine Tanksley bought guns in huge quantities (43 in 26 hours!) at a gun show in Indiana, brought them across the border, and sold them to criminals in Chicago. There was no tracking of the sales; they were only caught because they sold to an informant. Not as dramatic as a mass shooting, but arguably just as harmful given the sheer number of gangsters they supplied with firearms.
@33: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Also, have you noticed all the people pointing out that we actually regulate swimming pools and hold people accountable for negligence in their ownership thereof?
@34 Can't disagree with that. Chicago / Detroit / St. L / Etc. do not need more guns sold to criminals. The safeguards we have in place should be in place for every sale - private or gun show included.
@34 - there is very little regulation on private swimming pools actually and there is very little accountability in owner's negligence. (I'm talking about private pools, not public use or commercial use).
Additionally, there have been several studies that have shown that despite their reputation, the majority of criminal-use firearms were not obtained through gun shows or from private person to person (Craigslist..etal) sales but from friends/family and/or crooked dealers.
So if you're going to continue with the NRA fetish, (and I suspect you will) you should probably know that the gun industry's biggest lobbyist isn't the NRA, it's the NSSF. The National Shooting Sports Foundation.
If you're not going to blame the criminals, at least blame the right scapegoat.
In any case, improved firearm regulation isn't about the total elimination of mental illness, or of violent crime. It is about harm reduction. There will always be mentally ill persons, or desperate persons, or, yes, just plain evil persons around. Given that fact, is it not logical to take steps to prevent such people from having easy access to weapons that can allow them to kill quickly and easily?
Yes, yes, knives, bats, bricks, bare fists, etc. etc. have all been used to kill, and to kill multiple people. But at the Sandy Hook / Columbine / Fort Hood / you name it end of the carnage scale, nothing compares to firearms.
Mental illness still exists - why are you not interested in helping ensure that heavily armed mental illness does not?
Evil and mentally ill are neither mutually exclusive nor equivalent. They're both potentially useful ways to define and therefore begin yo solve problems. And both are potential crutches for lazy minds to avoid solving anything.
Just as the catchall phrase "gun control" is the lazy mans way of appearing to, but not actually in any way accomplishing, the harm reduction of which you write.
Yeah! It says it right there in the 2nd amendment! "Over equipped, overweight middle managers being able to bag a deer being a core condition of happiness, the right to have and bear arms shall not be infringed upon".
Like claiming the felonious behavior of Bill Clinton was "just sex" (a new and intriguing definition for perjury and conspiracy to suborn witnesses in an ongoing civil matter) the bs about hunting is a lefty red herring.
" Most gun control advocates don't have a problem w/ sporting firearms, it's the ones that are specifically designed for killing people that they want to restrict access to."
ALL gun control advocates fall into 2 camps: Those that are ignorant about the end goal of "Gun Control" and those that deliberately lie and obfuscate about the actual end goal i.e a complete prohibition (ah, that word has a familiar ring) on the ownership of any firearm by non-military and non-LE private citizens with special dispensations doled out to favored individuals.
This particular rag, and its hacks is too cowardly to just come out and state that, letting that position be taken up by others who at least have the honesty to state what they really want
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-l…
And please do school us on what a sporting firearm is vs one that is designed for killing people.
@9, Yet, the percentage of homicides made with a "medium caliber fully or semi-automatic rifle capable of accepting high capacity detachable box magazines" is miniscule. On average, in most states, it is far easier to obtain a rifle (bolt action or semi) than a handgun. Yet rifles, regardless of how scary they might be for you, are rarely used in homicides.
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/cri…
(2011: 6,220 handgun homicides versus 323 rifle - bolt action or semi, it isn't broken out - homicides.)
I think that what a lot of gun-control-nuts fail to realize is that there is a very limited amount of political capital available. When you waste your political capital on banning the 'Evil Black Rifle', and those 'Terrifying High Cap Magazines' you waste your time and have little, to no effect, on anything. Which just gives gun-nuts more "ammunition" to show how what you're doing is stupid.
Boston marathon? Oklahoma City Fed building? If you really want to slaughter *a lot* of people, the #1 choice has always been the homemade bomb.
As far as the recent shooting goes, the shooter had 3 semi-automatic handguns. The fact that he only killed three people (including himself) with bullets had nothing to do with limits on his ammunition.
Regardless, mass killings are statistically insignificant and are not something that you are likely to prevent by banning X firearm.
Incidentally, media coverage and sensationalism and the continued use of killers names has probably contributed more to the ongoing problem than any laxity in gun control laws. The lure of instant fame is seductive for some.
@7: That's funny. Whenever we bring up the phrase "well-regulated militia", you demand that we ignore the actual wording because freedumb.
@15: The difference is that, as is the case with swimming pools and cars, we regulate potential bomb-making materials for the sake of safety and security. For some reason it's considered taboo to investigate people who out-of-the-blue buy ten rifles, or to impose user-safety guidelines on firearms manufactured in this country.
Was there a mass killer that suddenly bought 10 rifles? I don't remember any that fit that bill, even assuming some overstatement. Lanza didn't buy any iirc, they belonged to his mom. Rodger bought 3 handguns one after another, not unusual for a sport shooter.
As for the regulation of bomb making materials, you can buy a variety in quantities appropriate for a Boston marathon type attack with less paperwork than buying a gun.
"@9 A medium caliber fully or semi-automatic rifle capable of accepting high capacity detachable box magazines is NOT a sporting firearm. It is a tool that has been carefully designed for the purpose of killing lots of people in a short time. A bad guy who gets his hands on such a weapon can do a lot more harm than a bad guy who has to make do with a break-open shotgun or a bolt action rifle."
First, do you have ANY idea how hard it is to get hold of a Full Auto weapon. How many have been used in multiple victim shootings?
Second, your comment "It is a tool that has been carefully designed for the purpose of killing lots of people in a short time"
Is that why an increasingly out of control police - refer to yesterday's story about Seattle cops affirming their continued right to beat the tar out of all of us - ALL ACROSS the nation carry semi-automatic AR-15s in the trunk of their patrol car? No? well how about full-sweet-jesus-it-sprays-800-bullets per-minute-Auto like these fucking clowns
http://reason.com/blog/2014/05/16/why-th…
That's meat inspectors. Asking for military grade full-auto submachine guns.
323 deaths from rifles in 2011, out of a population of 317 million. Quite the irrational fixation you have there, no?
In terms of terrorist attack, bombs are the higher body count weapon. If you're arguing for the right of citizens to carry grenades around for self defense or something you might want to get off the internet and find a nice wacko militia compound to call home.
I believe that one of the biggest reasons why the 'Evil Black Rifle' is so popular is customization. I personally don't really understand it, but there are more options for customizing an AR than any other rifle. Incidentally, before the initial ban, AR's were not very popular rifles. I suspect that a lot of their initial popularity was directly due to the ban.
Ken Mehlman, don't you think racist swimming pools are a bigger problem?
Are you open to the suggestion that perhaps you and millions of infantilized others are manipulated at an emotional level into reacting irrationally against threats that are statistically non-existent?
Scaring the crap out of people who are scared of guns anyways. That's the most often cited reason among the people who have tacticool weapons when I go for target practice. /shrug
Hopefully never. What does that have to do with a US citizens right to have one just in case?
"all else being equal, a bad guy w/ a break open shotgun is less dangerous than a bad guy w/ a military style assault rifle"
No. A crazed gunman could harm a lot of people with either weapon.
Tacticool weapons scare you. Try going out to a gun range that rents weapons or even just a gun store sometime and comparing the difference between a tacticool weapon and an unobjectionable wooden stock hunting rifle. All you'll find is that the black plastic covered rifle scares you more. That's it, that's the entirety of the difference between them.
This is WAY beyond this-type-of-weapon-versus-that-type-of-weapon mate, just self-examine and answer this simple question:
Why are you fixated on remedies to a an occurrence - being shot by a crazy person with a semi-automatic rifle - that even the FBI's statistics show, accounts for 0.00010% of all deaths in 2011 - why does THAT animate you more than thousands of kids drowning in a pool every year?
"Is it possible that I'm in favor of regulatory measures that would reduce the number of school children who die in drowning accident"
Really? I've just looked through your comment history and I'm drawing a blank finding any threads where you've been outspoken about The Swimming Pool Problem. I think if you'd had a fraction of the fervor about the Evul Black Rifles, you'd at least not been beaten to the punch about Evil Swiming Pools by an Unreformed Troglodyte like me.
Curiouser still, I can't find a single SLOG thread on Deadly Swimming Pools killing Black Kids disproportionally anywhere!
Why is that Ken? RACIST!
"AND in favor making rules that reduce the number of people killed by crazed gunmen"
Reduce the number from 323 which includes Bolt Action rifles, and which is less than the number of deaths BY FISTS in 2011?! Really?!
Again, I will ask you something that you pointedly avoid answering:
Why does this statistically minuscule - as a proportion of the population, not to take away from the tragedy and sorrow on an individual level - cause of death, animate you with such fervor and righteousness, where other much easier to overcome causes of death that take many, MANY more lives do not? WHY IS THAT KEN?
@33: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Also, have you noticed all the people pointing out that we actually regulate swimming pools and hold people accountable for negligence in their ownership thereof?
Additionally, there have been several studies that have shown that despite their reputation, the majority of criminal-use firearms were not obtained through gun shows or from private person to person (Craigslist..etal) sales but from friends/family and/or crooked dealers.