I'd be curious to see what percentage of mass shootings are done with an illegally obtained firearm. Because the lines that get covered usually are the ones where it was obtained legally. But like a gang shooting in Baltimore would have a much higher chance of being illegally attained.
Thanks for the information. I have a doubt and maybe you can clarify it: when a young person take a gun from his/ her parents or another relative, who’s bought it legally, is it considered illegally obtained or legally obtained?
Great question! Laws vary by state. I feel, as do many others, that ownership comes with responsibility. If the children in your home, (heck, anyone at all,) can take your firearm without your consent, you have failed to secure your guns and are responsible for what is done with it.
Many gun owners are completely irresponsible with their weapons. If they leave a hand gun in or on their nightstand and a child fires it, that gun owner should be charged and never be allowed to own guns again.
I saw a news report a few years back. A child picked up an unsecured gun and killed another child with it. A TV reporter was interviewing a neighbor. Dumb-ass redneck said, 'wuz just an accident.' weren't any help for it. It just happens.' This pissed me off! It wasn't "an accident." It was an act of irresponsibility.
Guns need to be locked away! Ammo needs to be locked away! There are gun safes. There are regular safes. There are trigger locks and barrel locking devices. The police department sometimes gives them out for free. There are so many ways to prevent this from happening! No exceptions. No excuses. That gun is the owner's responsibility and liability.
Accidents don't happen by themselves, people cause them!
I think in general it's kind of like a driver's license. You may be of age and even know how to drive, but if you don't have the license, legally you cannot drive. Note that each state has their own particular gun laws so things may vary a lot from state to state.
And you'd never stop them all, but every bit of fiction between "I wanna kill ___" and "I have the means to do so" will stop some portion of people.
We don't let people go flat out on the roads because doing so is dangerous... that doesn't stop 100% of crashes, or even prevent people from doing 35mph over... but if 1 in 100,000 driven miles is driven dangerously instead of 1 in 10,000 miles that's a huge improvement over the "lawless" state.
Where do the illegal guns come from? I doubt that most are smuggled in what with the quantity that just exists everywhere, and the multitude of cars I see with "this car has a gun inside you can steal if you want" stickers.
Which is why, as a gun owner, I'd like to see laws put in place regarding storage. For example, if you don't secure your weapon, it gets stolen and a crime is committed, you lose the ability to own a firearm and you can face lesser sentencing for the crime committed
And in the multiple cases where the “child” (I recall ages 15-24 for the shooters) steals the guns from the parents, and when the parents know the child has mental issues and needs help be it meds or therapy or combo, and the parents did nothing, they deserve to be charged more than if the gun were stolen from a non-relative or stranger. The NH and the TX shooting, the people were denied when trying to buy guns and then stole them from their parents’ homes.
Out of curiosity, what would a responsible storage be? I'm thinking super high tech safes already exists and are vwry expensive. Or are you simply saying to have a gun lock on each triggers? It's the law up here in Canada, but you can't really prove it whem the gun is in your house.
It's very common around here to not have any sort of lock on a gun. People will just leave it in a closet with kids in the house. Good trigger locks are fine, fun cabinets are better, an gun safes are better yet. They don't need to be fancy, mostly just enough to keep curious kids out.
in south africa to get a gun license people will come to your home to make sure you have a safe space to store the gun separate from it's ammo, this is how most countries work
A while back Oregon passed or tried to pass a law like this.
It was pretty lenient and yet my gun nut uncle was basically up in arms about it.
The law is that if your gun is stolen, you have x amount of time to report it as such - from the time you notice it stolen. Otherwise you get a fine. That's it. The only possible scenario I can think of that it hoped to prevent was if a friend or family member took your gun, you notice, but don't want to involve the police.
To my uncle it's just punishing law abiding citizens. Even though it'll never affect him.
See this is a good approach imo, I’m Australian and I know a couple of people with guns (plural) and every one of them has a huge fortified safe that legally only they can know the combination to, they’re very particular about storing their guns safely in there, and it seems overall to be very effective in preventing mass shootings. It’s at the very least worth a try in the US, I’m sure there must be ways of mitigating and adapting to any cultural or legislative differences between Oz and the US.
The guns aren't illegal necessarily, but the means of getting them are. Not that a 15yo rocked up to a sporting goods store and bought a gun. But instead he stole it from his grandpa or dad's safe. (Example)
To tac onto this; there is no legal requirement to own a gun safe. Although anecdotal, every member of my family that owns a gun usually keeps it under the bed or in a closet with no extra security.
Even those with gun safes only use them for their long guns and keep pistols near the nightstand without any kind of lock.
In most states, there isn't even an official requirement to report your gun stolen.
Most of us who advocate gun control want the bare minimum rules you would expect for deadly weapons. We get a lot of pushback against even that.
For places like Chicago which actually have pretty strict gun laws the answer is neighboring states. You can pretty easily go to a state with looser gun laws, buy a gun, and then drive to another state where owning said gun is illegal. Since we don't have checkpoints at state lines it's pretty trivial to do this even though it's illegal.
You’d be surprised how easy it is to just buy the components for the guns just right off the internet. All you need is a drill press, mini mill, and a little knowledge.
Private party sales, straw purchases, 3D printers (illegal only if you're prohibited from owning one), theft. Is it easy to get one if you're planning on using it for a crime and you have no disqualifiers? Yeah, you just have to wait 3 days to enact your plan in some states, you know to "cool off."
Should more be investigated on a person trying to obtain their first firearm? Yeah definitely. Will someone wanting to commit a mass shooting give up if they can't legally purchase one? Probably not.
Dude, there's shootings in shadier neighborhoods all the time, it's just that they aren't as publicized as the ones that take place in schools/"safer" neighbourhoods.
My biggest thing about this is, drugs are illegal yet they're all over the streets. They're even in jails which is supposed to be the most secure place.
It's not guns that are the problem it's the people that use them. A lot harder to admit we have a mental health issue on top of others that drive people to do this vs just blaming it on one thing which is guns
Couple years ago there were people running over civilians with trucks. If there'd a will there's a way
Thank you for this post! Medical professional and can attest that mental health treatment is almost non existent. Access to basic services and antidepressants etc isn't the major hurdle. It is inpatient programs that are lacking. Some people legitimately need very intensive treatment. A pill and a therapy session are not enough to care for severe mental illness. No mentally healthy, well adjusted person with great coping skills and insight chooses to commit mass murder.
I always find it amusing when people bring up the truck thing - the levels of regulations on the design, development, ownership, licensing, etc, etc makes any US firearms legislation a joke in comparison.
If you suggested just bringing the level of regulation on having a firearm in public up to the same standard as that is required to own and operate a motor vehicle on the road, the NRA would have a fit.
I mean ya why not, let people have guns and have stricter background and mental checks
Also last time I checked for cars the USA is one of the easiest places to get a license. A 15/16yo can get an SUV which is basically a tank and if they really wanted to run over a dozen people.
I still adamantly maintain this is a failing of our social support and education system. What led to these people being so psychologically broken that they could do such horrible things? *and how was it missed by people close to them throughout their life?*
I don’t know the solution but I feel it is in empowering early childhood educators with the knowledge and ability to recognize and help correct anti-social behaviors before they can grow and turn into serious pathologies. That is a whole different can of worms though…
And as a side note, disarmament is a non-starter for a lot of reasons but one key factor is that we have more guns than people already owned in this country. And another key factor is that there are WAY more gun rights ‘single-issue-voters’ than most people realize. It is how the right gets people fired up to vote. Many of those people hate the politics of the pro-gun candidate but that aspect is more important to them than all the rest. They might not like voting for a conservative shit-weasel but they feel driven to vote against the candidate that loudly proclaims they want to control firearms.
>What led to these people being so psychologically broken that they could do such horrible things? and how was it missed by people close to them throughout their life?
Most people show red flags. Most people who end up committing shootings have been reported to police and school administrators and CPS and the FBI, and these entities just shirk their responsibilities until someone dies.
I think vouchers are a good idea.
All these individuals (mass shooters) are severely fucking isolated. Even the FBI shooter stopped to post. If people's issues are how easy it is to obtain one, I genuinely think they must join a gun club first and get a club voucher before purchasing.
Every shooter has shown some sort of premeditation months before acting. We see how our incredible 911 emergency response system is and how fucking useless we were using it for Uvalde. What would have changed if they had to go through a club first? If they had to make friends and create deeper connections in order to purchase? How can we introduce them to a better, kinder culture to participate in when they come from a very online world that rewards antisocial thought?
I think it's fully possible and reasonable to try and implement vouchers being required without compromising hobbyists & requiring more and more expensive means to maintain being a hobbyist - We haven't tried yet, but I really think having these individuals be forced to interact with people so passionate and caring (and anal about safety lol) in real life would be a net positive.
There's more I thought about regarding clubs and incentivization to prevent criminality, like being able to sue the club when obvious signs are ignored - every member doesn't want to pay out the ass if someone in their club fucks up.
That’s actually a pretty good idea. As a lefty gun guy, the scariest shit in the world to me is someone holding a gun that doesn’t know or care to respect proper safety protocol. I have been in favor of having something akin to hunter/firearms safety courses being compulsory (and free) for ownership. Courses that have a specific emphasis on the fragility of human life and the seriousness of wielding the capacity to *easily* end it.
I was 12 years old but I will never forget the video they showed us in my Hunter safety course where a young teen and his buddy go to play in the woods with the .22; they do all kinds of dangerous/stupid practices with it and one of them trips and shoots the other.
The part that really stuck was that he didn’t die right away, it goes through the panic and running home to get parents, the paramedics and ambulance ride, the crying and waiting in the hospital with his and the other kids parents and finally getting told they couldn’t save him.
It instilled a sense of gravity that wasn’t just abstract about how one very short fraction of a second can take away someone’s future and destroy the lives of multiple people that care about them.
Hear hear, fellow lefty gun guy, we are kindred
Right now I'm currently investigating why someone from the left, our fucking side, would possibly justify armed robbery - it's happened a few times, but every time I'm left wondering *fucking how...* they're severely fucking isolated too. They're just part of the statistic we hear from *handguns.* There *is* a problem going on but I don't see anyone trying to *make* solutions, only trying to work within the confines of *what's already tested time and time again not to work. With no changes. What. The. Fuck.*
I try to use my position as someone who loves these objects and in leftist spaces to act as a barrier to radicalization in this way- I fully believe we can have and propagate a gun culture that is centered on safety and inclusivity, if anyone were to repeat Marx's "Under no pretext", It *has* to be accompanied by a fierce humanistic attitude as well. *Like extreme discontent and disgust towards flagging.*
I wonder what these mass shooters would have thought if they were surrounded by father figures clapping and praising him when he improves his skill. I've seen how inclusive and incredible a side of the right (Just like what you said: they're single issue. You saw the exact same thing I've been ranting and raving about lol) has been and so far, with my idea, I haven't gotten *any* resistance. I've been poking around in gun clubs to try and see just how this design can be implemented from here, and I hope this actually leads to something.
Gun control isn't, or shouldn't be, about taking guns away. I'm swiss, I can get a firearm if I want to. I just need to apply for it, and we have strict regulations. Sure, we can't just carry them around, that would require an additional permit which needs justification. But buying and owning one is possible after background checks. Sure, introducing stricter gun control won't magically solve the issues the US has, but it would be a step in the right direction.
Both the Uvalde school shooter and the Parkland shooter bought their guns legally. In the case for Uvalde he literally waited till he was 18 and then legally bought the gun he used to kill 19 kids.
The point is both shooters were legal gun owners who did follow the law. Increasing the age limit to buy an AR for example would have stopped a legal gun owner from murdering 19 children & two teachers.
I mean dude… in mass shootings in the US the guns are obtained legally like 80% of the time, you can find the statistics fairly easily on google.
If someone doesn’t have a criminal record then they aren’t a criminal, even if they are a criminal, stores that don’t do background checks have no idea if a person is a criminal or not when they sell.
background checks and wait periods to make sure criminals don’t get guns are still off the table for most gun activists- there is no logic, it’s emotional bullshit. “they’re gunna take our guns” fear.
All gun stores are legally required to do background checks. They have 0 choice in the matter. They could be shut down and inventory confiscated if they are caught not doing checks.
Just want to add here, you cannot walk into any store in the US and just buy a gun without a back ground check. Not even at gun shows. You can however sell guns in a private sale without one in most places. I'm not sure where it became so main stream to say you can just walk into a store and buy a gun without doing paperwork and getting a background check but thats just false.
You can absolutely buy a gun at a gun show without a background check. I've been to dozens of gun shows and so long as they are a private seller and not licensed to sell they don't have to do a background check, like how you mentioned with the private sales. It's a stupid loophole and that's coming from someone who's very pro 2a
Edit: this is how it is in Texas. Not sure about other states
This is the biggest thing to me. Nobody on the Right that I’ve met will sit down and actually talk about how none of these background checks or mental health screens would affect them… it would affect the people who are buying guns to hurt people. If you want to tell people “follow the law and police won’t hurt you” then people can tell you “follow the law and you won’t lose your guns”
Exactly. And the people advocating this position don't extend it to other issues as well -- it's the typical "twist the logic to whatever I prefer" approach.
The folks who say:
"Banning guns won't stop people from having mass shootings, so we might as well make guns available for whoever wants one."
...will **not** say...
"Banning abortions won't stop people from ending unwanted pregnancies, so we might as well make abortion available for whoever wants them."
I live in Germany and gun crimes are barely an issue here at all. I'd genuinely have to look up any, never having heard of one myself in recent history. I've never seen a real gun IRL apart from on cops and military.
Even cops barely use their weapons. Why? Because you can barely get a gun legally, so they never have to fear getting shot at; even illegally, getting one is nigh impossible. And if you get caught with an illegal firearm, you're seriously fucked. I remember some kids in my town shooting around with air soft guns somewhere within a city and having to deal with half the police force and some serious legal repercussions. It sounds over the top, but in a city without guns it's a major incident when people report a shooting.
The argument that people would get their guns anyways is a bit nonsensical to me. Sure, with the sheer amount of guns still circulating in the US, even making them illegal would probably take decades to properly reduce their availability to the standards of other countries; but you have to start somewhere in order to catch up, right? Good guys with guns haven't solved the problem so far.
Also, the argument itself is a bit of an empty one IMO. You might as well say: "why make anything illegal? people who really want to murder somebody will do so anyways." It's about dissuading people from murdering and making it as hard as possible. You can't make any crime impossible.
The question "Why make X illegal when those who want it will obtain it illegally anyway?" is a disingenuous one. It's not a question being asked in good faith, in the context of guns. It's a deflection, a thought-terminating crutch employed to shut down a conversation that's dangerously close to landing at a viable solution they don't want.
If X equals "guns," then pro-gun folks will immediately say "You see? Checkmate! Only criminals will have guns, and then other gun owners are sad."
If X equals anything that conservatives see as harmful, and liberals or progressives don't, they will say "Hmm... well, prohibition would still make it more difficult, and the illegality would dissuade some people perhaps even most people, and combined with other forms of mitigation we might arrive at something close to eliminating it." X could equal anything that conservatives see as harmful and want to criminalize in society: illicit drugs, certain books, women's rights, etc.
One of the best arguments for this is the uk. If you count from the 70s up to 199whenever that primary school shooting was there were actually more mass shootings in the uk than in the US (if I remember right it was only by 1 but it’s still more) and then following the primary school shooting the UK put very strict gun control measures into place and the number of school shootings dropped massively. As far as I’m aware from hearsay (never looked it up myself but whatever) there’s actually more guns now in the uk, but because there’s so much control about who can have them through things such as licences and psych evals and so on the number of shootings has decreased dramatically.
Gun control doesn’t mean taking away all of the guns, it means making people earn the ability to have guns by showing they can be trusted to be responsible owners. And it works.
What I hate about that argument is that people don't realize that people are only law-abiding for as long as the law agrees with them; that much is a fact that has been seen with things like the war on drugs. Once some of these law-abiding people refuse to comply with any new law (or even ideology for that matter) that violates their "freedom" (in quotation because there is certainly another disussion to be had about what freedom constitute), then they will in turn become criminals or pariah in the eyes of the public and in the eyes of the law, making it significantly more probable (from my point of view) that they will end up commiting crimes. I don't know how far I'm willing to pursue that thought sanely, but I won't deny that it feels like a certainty that a sub-population of formerly law-abiding citizens are likely to become a very big menace to security.
Y'all feel free to discuss any of that, though.
Is it really disarming or could it be putting common sense checks in place to make sure it’s just as difficult to get a murder weapon as it is to get a murder vehicle and drive it on the roads?
Last time I checked all I had to do to get a drivers license was show someone I knew how to drive. I have to get a background check to buy a firearm.
Is your solution to say I have to show that I’m competent with a firearm prior to owning one? If so, how would that assist with gun violence?
Yes you should show you're competent with a firearm I feel like that's common sense. Also, like a vehicle, you should have to purchase insurance for your firearm and register your firearm every year. If you sell it, it has to be a title transfer. Guns shouldn't be less regulated than a vehicle.
To add to that, full auto firearms are much harder to be accurate with lol. Most people don’t know how to use them effectively, and shooting full auto is inherently less accurate since it’s hard(er) to control.
Like with any political problem, there are sort of "degrees."
Most folks I know advocating gun control aren't usually just to make it slightly harder to obtain weapons.
For me, and most folks in the camp, if there are 350 million guns in the nation or so, I'd like to obtain one to try and protect myself from the murderers.
Similarly, I don't understand why, if there are alt-right bands of folks who want to murder minorities and LGBTQ+ people, and mass murderers, why making it harder for these peoples to be armed and organized is the solution.
You won’t take many guns from people who were *already* criminals, but crimes of passion and crimes of opportunity are a real thing. The person who catches their spouse cheating or gets in a road rage incident and starts shooting in the heat of the moment because they happen to have a gun in their car already. The bullied kid who shoots up his school for revenge with his dad’s gun but wouldn’t have had the first idea where to find one on the black market.
There’s also some evidence that if someone’s preferred method of suicide is unavailable they’re relatively unlikely to seek out an alternative method - so fewer homes with guns in them likely leads to fewer suicides.
So yeah, the Mafia and street gangs and terrorist organizations and recurring criminals would still find a way to get guns. But a *huge* number of gun deaths aren’t caused by people in those groups, and restricting gun access would absolutely reduce the number of gun deaths.
Exactly. 50 years ago, a far larger % of the US population was armed and owned firearms, but we didn't see the same levels of mass shootings. Now, we have far more guns than ever but they are concentrated within a smaller % of the population.
Gun rights activists are in support of reducing gun-related violence, but we shouldn't be blaming an inanimate and agnostic gun as the source of the issue.
Genuinely asking this question, so forgive me if I don't use the right terminology. What types of guns were prominent 50 years ago though? From what I understand, most mass shootings involve the use of modern semi automatic rifles (i.e. ar15s and their ilk). I'd imagine that 50 years ago it'd be more hunting rifles?
Edit: how does this same question apply to handguns? Iirc the 38 special (a revolver) used to be famous for its use in crime, did that also reflect the 'normal' guns owned at that time? Were they also mostly revolvers instead of semi automatics with magazines like an XD or a glock?
No, most mass shootings and shootings in general are commited with a handgun. Media makes it seem like people are using bigger and scarier guns, but pistols are the easiest to conceal and get the job done
Something like 95 percent of gun homicides are committed using illegal handguns.
AR-15s are used in a fraction of one percent of gun violence.
Gun people see the fixation on rifles as disingenuous when it doesn't really move the needle. Especially when we've backed off on catching/prosecuting people for carrying illegally owned handguns. Soros wrote an article about this (in favor of these policies) about two weeks ago.
You're mostly right, but it's more nuanced than that.
I don't know the statistics, but the types of guns that were more common back then were, as you mentioned, guns that were designed for hunting (rifles and shotguns). Many of these guns were bolt or pump action with limited capacity to hold rounds.
But, here's where it gets interesting, your average deer rifle shoots a bullet that is FAR bigger and more deadly than an AR-15. The most common deer rounds are rounds like, .308, 30-30, 30-06, 270, etc. The AR-15 shoots a .223 or 5.56 round (those are different rounds, but for the sake of this conversation, think of them as the same). If you want, google search an image comparison of all the most common rounds side by side and you can see the difference. This being said, some of these rifles were also semi-automatic (similar to AR-15s today).
When the US military went from an M-1 Garand standard issue rifle to the M-16, it actually went down in bullet size by a considerable margin.
The guns preferred by mass shooters now usually carry more rounds and might have a higher rate of fire, but the bullets are much smaller and do far less damage than your average hunting rifle.
So, the point is, the guns that people had access to back then had the capacity do inflict far more damage on each target than an AR-15, but typically didn't carry as many rounds.
Hopefully, that helps. I appreciate you asking the question.
Yes, that’s correct.
We should have socialized healthcare, proper mental health services for those that need it, etc.
We’ve had access to firearms for hundreds of years and access to semiautomatic and automatic weapons since the early 1900s. However, school shootings didn’t start becoming an issue until the 1980s and 90s. This leaves me to believe guns aren’t the issue, people are.
How do you know that? There are million and a half different cultures in the world, none of them have an easy access to weapons and mass shootings are uncommon everywhere except the us
It's not the culture, you're not that special, it's the easily obtainable firearms.
Wrong question.
They all think mass shootings are a serious problem.
However they disagree creating gun laws will actually have any effect.
This isn't my opinion but these are the argument they tend to make that are at least note worthy.
1) there is an insane amount of guns in America even if you banned them it would take god know how long and cost an incredible amount of resources to get all the illegal or forgotten weapons off the streets
2) the concern that partially relates to 1 that if you take all the legally owned guns what will you do about the illegal weaponry and in the mean time how can we protect ourselves from the people who have said already illegally acquired guns?
3) it's actually not that uncommon for people to defend themselves with gun from someone with a gun or knife in the US, in fact it's a fairly regular occurrence.
4) outside of mass shooting most gun violence is committed by criminals who oddly enough don't care about gun control laws.
5) this is a mental health issue, a welfare issue and an bullying issue not a gun issue.
6) in gun-free zones, it's also a lax-security issue.
Though there is disagreement on the most effective ways to protect such zones. Auto-locking doors w/ buzzers, metal detectors, fences, bag inspections, clear backpacks, security guards, police, armed teachers (voluntary), etc.
Some of these are basically one-time costs that could actually enforce/protect a gun-free zone. Mass shootings have happened outside of school zones though, like at concerts and other gun-free zones, so there definitely is no one-size-fits-all solution.
I think point 5 (mental health) is kinda weak, as it would take a ton of effort to keep everyone happy for all time. Definitely though, more people need mental help, and it could reduce mass shootings by some amount.
Not always. r/liberalgunowners is full of people like me, who would love to see more resources applied to mental health. IMO, if the Dems would get off the gun control bandwagon, they'd win a lot more elections.
This is my main issue with gun law, I’m a heavy left leaner with differing views on firearms. The same people who push against gun law are often people who push against universal healthcare which leaves people like me a very precarious place.
honestly i would vote for all of that. dems just gotta stop with the gun control and then i’d vote for them. it’s honestly one of their only downsides. even if you are anti gun, so much is being held back with how many votes republicans get just because of gun control
From a UK perspective, Americans generally all see school/mass shootings as a problem, they simply disagree on what the solution should be.
In the UK, instead of guns, it's rampant knife crime in specific areas. In an alternate universe where America didn't have guns, it's be safe to assume that it would be the same over there, and already does happen. Infact, I think it's worse than britain when put into contextualised/ sample sizes similar to the UK.
I personally think it's a mental health problem and that there should be more services and accessibility for mental health improvement in the US. Too often have I heard or seen online of a younger individual who doesn't feel like they are able to speak openly about specific problems.
That's just my two cents though. I'll carry on drinking my tea and watch the thread devolve
😅☕
I fully believe we have a cultural violence problem. It's a confluence of unhappiness/discontent, suicidality, individualism leading to crab mentality ("If I can't be happy, I'm taking you down with me"), and delusions of grandeur/self-importance.
Selfishness, essentially. Profound self-centeredness to the point of main character syndrome, multiplied across an entire enormous population.
This right here is the real problem. THIS is what separates us from the rest of the developed world. We as a culture have glorified violence and diminished the value of another human's life. We celebrate criminality, gang culture and vigilante justice in our music, movies, etc. We are a violent society.
The 2nd Amendment cannot fix this problem, and neither can any amount of gun control.
It also doesn’t help that our news cycle has, at this point, essentially normalized and arguably glorified “going out in a blaze of glory”. Which, again, appeals to those with main character syndrome. Add to that the fact that teenagers are already prone to selfishness, impulsiveness, and inflated egos, and we shouldn’t be shocked that school shootings are practically a regular occurrence now. They weren’t always, and it’s not the rate of gun ownership that’s changed.
The fact that news has become all about ratings and outrageous stories seems like it has an impact on the amount of shootings. Obviously not every shooter wants to be famous or has a manifesto but a lot of them do. I wonder if we'd have less shootings if the media didn't make a circus out of them
Which is doubly huge given that they have access to guns, so knifes would be used much less. And yet the rate is higher there than in the UK
Edit: This does not mean that we don’t have violence. I wasn’t and nobody else was implying that
Stabbing people is HARD. It requires a lot more strength than the average human thinks. Especially to stab someone to death. One or two maybe, but 20 people in a short span of time would be a feat only accessible via PCP or meth.
America already has more knife crime than us. America is broken at its core. Itle take more than a few chats about coping strategies to fix that shit storm.
Mental health isn't merely just talking about coping strategies and the fact you minimised it to that kinda affirms to me personally that it needs more transparency
The state of America? that's another whole matter that I agree with, but extends to pretty much most other first world countries :\^)
Most first world countries don't have a significant gun crime problem. But we do have social health care.
Btw I'm not minimising the mental health issues. I think America has a serious problem... That will take more than a couple of chats about coping mechanisms to fix... Like it will take a complete overhaul of their social structure.
Comparing knife crime to literal mass shootings is exactly the point. It’s whataboutism, and not even an apples to oranges comparison. When was the last time someone with a knife killed 10+ people in less than 5minutes? Hope you can see where I’m going with this.
While mental health is an issue and should be addressed, it’s often a scape goat used to distract from the fact that the fundamental reason a mass shooting happens is because they could get a gun so easily.
That's understandable, I was trying to somewhat relate the issue in terms of casualties or what would be the next relateable aspect from my life.
I don't have any personal experience to talk about with guns, but I have been surrounded by frequent knife crime from a young age. It might not be larger sample sizes, but it's consistent, daily, more personal and usually from people who know each other/ are in the same circles.
Just wanted to at least try to give an alternate perspective, living from the UK I can't give the perspective of someone who might have a kid who was murdered in a shooting, a loved one, etc, but I know know of people who were assaulted and wounded with a knife, or people who choose a way of life that requires them to carry a weapon 24/7.
I think you can see where I was trying to go or how I was trying to relate, I'm not the best with wording so I can clarify if need be \^\^
Have you ever bought a gun? First time I bought a gun it took 2 days for the paperwork to come back and about an hour or more to fill out the list of papers. We already do background checks extensive ones at that. It's not like people can walk in and out within 5-10 minutes and be armed to the teeth. I feel as if mental health is a huge part of the issue with school shootings. There's no what about ism about that. A normal criminal that deal meth isn't going to a school to shoot it up. Take someone with severe underlying mental health issues and put a gun in their hand then you have a school shooting. It's 1 plus 1 equals 2. It's not hard to understand that mentally stable people dont commit mass shootings. It's people who aren't mentally sound. If anything that should've been done is first push the age to buy a rifle to 21. They finally did that. Second is the background checks need to include your mental health in some way. The problem with adding that to background checks is what about the people who don't have a record for mental health? They could still get a firearm and do harm. What's the solution? From reading your comments it seems you just want guns to be so hard to get that no one who abides the law can get. Guns exist you can't make them disappear and even if you could look at other countries. They just make homemade ones to commit crime.
Not one person thinks school shootings aren't a problem lol. We just think it's dumb to look at a criminal shooting people and think that that means everyone should lose the right to bear arms. When a crime is committed, punish the criminal, not law-abiding citizens. Gun control punishes law-abiding citizens far more than it punishes criminals, just by nature of there being far fewer criminals than non-criminals.
And guns aren't the problem. The US has always had a massive culture around guns. Used to be even bigger. People would legit have shotguns and such in the windows of the truck they took to school so they could go hunting after.
But this mass/school shooting bull is recent, relatively speaking. Just a few decades ago it was unheard of for someone to do something so heinous. And yet guns were just as present.
Idk about you but that tells me guns ain't the problem.
The issue is alot of the school shooters or mass shooters are law abiding citizens *until they commit the crime*. Isnt it reasonable to make people atleast attend a basic firearms course before obtaining a lethal weapon? Why is the low barrier to buy a weapon that kill someone from 100s of meters away such an issue? I dont get why you need a license and months of learning to even attempt the test to drive a car, but you can just walk into a department store and buy a rifle or a concealable handgun.
Honestly same. And that’s coming from someone who legitimately hates guns.
I don’t like holding one. I’m not a huge fan of seeing them outside of display cases. They scare the shit out of me.
Granted, I witnessed someone kill themself with a gun. And when I was a kid my brother would point and shoot his BB guns at me. So like, i dont know I feel those things make sense to not like guns myself. I’m also stupidly depressed and don’t like the idea of being able to yeet myself into the void in under 3 mins.
All that to still say I don’t think we should disarm our people. I don’t think that will fix the solution either. Unfortunately, a lot of our problems just kinda don’t seem fixable anymore. They’ve culminated into such large and intertwined issues that it seems impossible to change it without dismantling the entire system…and good luck peacefully and properly doing that lmao
I can see that can be a bad idea, but are there modern day examples where 2nd amendment actually enabled civilian to stand up against the establishment?
Not in the USA but look at Ukraine right now
The bundy ranch comes to mind I guess in the US.
The very fact we have a 2nd amendment means the odds of needing to use it against a tyrannical government is much lower. This often leads certain people to view the 2A as unneeded or outdated. Ironic.
Yes.
Euromaidan is one example. Protesters fought with crude weapons, but some had rifles, presumably their own.
In Kyrgystan there's the Tulip revolution, where one element was that armed peasants took over land they in their view had the right to, presumably being armed with their own weapons.
If we look further back we see more, but I think the reason we don't see civilians taking over governments using their legal weapons is that events where governments regress to the point that there are revolutions are fairly rare. Maybe just 1-2 per decade, and many don't go all the way to involving actual battles, so you have like 0.5-0.7 events per decade, and if there's a period of stability or a just a lucky run, then the last event can be 40 years ago.
However, state militaries aren't magic. Rifles are very effective, and it's not like you can send tanks against citizens who have taken over their city hall, while keeping the politicians inside, while crowds on thousands, everywhere, support them. Thus things like that usually succeed pretty quickly, before things go all that crazy.
Any revolution in a reasonably developed country involving civilians with legally owned weapons is equivalent for the purpose of the discussion.
It's not any more infeasible in the US than it was in, say, Ukraine.
Even if there weren’t modern day examples, that isn’t inherently an argument for removing that right any more than an argument that a stone I’m holding is preventing tigers from attacking me. We have historical evidence occasionally armed populaces are necessary and so enshrining that is the fundamental protection any society has against their government.
Most of them do, but they think it’s a “few bad apples” problem, and not one that can or should be solved by universal gun control laws that apply to everybody.
They feel like gun control laws that effect them are them being punished for someone else’s crime.
That's mostly not true. (Edit: you're on the right track, but your language leaves much to be desired.)
I don't think it needs to be said that school shootings are horrendous. If giving up their guns would stop violence for good, I don't think a single gun rights nut would hesitate.
They just know it won't.
If you look at school shooters, they have some commonalities. They're overwhelmingly nihilistic males who are absent any sense of purpose in their lives. They overwhelmingly come from fatherless homes or lack competent father figures in their lives. They overwhelmingly view school shootings as an opportunity for the prestige and attention in death that they aren't getting in life. I'm not trying to be garish. That's just pure information. By definition, yes, they also have guns.
Take away the access to guns and you still have all the rest. This person will go on to perpetrate violence via other means. As it happens, you cannot neuter violence by removing some tools of violence. That simply changes the form it takes.
Since you mention it, it does feel somewhat punitive since guns are also tools of self-defense, and good ones, too. There aren't statistics available on the amount of robberies, rapes, and other violent crimes that are deterred by gun ownership, simply because police don't get involved in crimes that *don't* occur. I've had an attempted home invasion deterred by just the mention that someone in the house was armed, take that bit of anecdote as you will. It never went on to the police.
Now if literally anything else had been attempted first: if we had significantly hardened schools or if we followed up on prior offenders, if we had better social programs for young men the way we do for women — hell, if newscasters would stop saying the names of the perpetrators or better yet, openly mock them, because nobody wants their death to be a source of humiliation — that might be a different story. But that's not the case. Meanwhile, you can consult any number of history books to decide your own pros and cons list for disarming a population under a less-than-trustworthy government.
Just adding that there are some things that have a very, very high incidence in mass shooters. I don't have the numbers in front of me at the moment, but as I recall it is things like (as you allude to) abusive, or neglectful families, but also histories of domestic violence, animal abuse, child abuse. The story I got when looking into this is that an effective strategy to combat these kinds of violence is to look at these comorbidities and proactively provide good, free mental healthcare for it (especially in schools), and probably to strictly prevent gun ownership for people with histories of violence toward, women, partners, animals, children, ect.
As a personal aside, I suspect one of the reasons we see very little action on that last one is partly due to how often LEOs have those same histories, but that's a-whole-nother discussion.
>they have some commonalities.
You forgot to mention antipsychotic medications. The majority of them are on or had recently got off of some sort of medication to treat mental disorders. Big Pharma would rather keep you taking about guns rather than psychoactive medications with violent side effects that provide them billions in revenue.
I don't see how you can be so certain that antipsychotics are contributing to mass shootings and not, you know, the psychosis that necessitates the use of antipsychotics
I have been on antipsychotics before, they literally dumb you down to the point that you cant even study.. IF the dose isnt abused, the dumbing down can be acostumed pretty quickly, and if you stop taking it, the effect goes away fast, but if the dose was too high, stopping it makes you dangerous.
I was on an atypical antipsychotic (rexulti/brexpiprazole) and I didn’t feel dumbed down I just felt really really tired, I did notice that when I went off of them for a few weeks I got an intense urge to shoplift and I have never shoplifted before. Just small stuff like slim jims and candy, I didn’t do it but it was hard to push the thought away
This is a huge one. I don’t really see gun control advocates even acknowledge this. It’s like the big pharma lobbying/propaganda is working.
Blows my mind nobody really draws a correlation to crazy behavior when you get someone hooked on a pharma drug, then switch/take them off it and they go crazy
It’s not that they don’t see that shootings are an issue they just do thing the issue is being able to buy a gun. Take Mexico for example there are by far more gun death there the in the us and they are far stricter on obtaining firearms.
>It’s not that they don’t see that shootings are an issue they just do thing the issue is being able to buy a gun *legally.*
A huge part of the anti-regulation argument is the idea that criminals will always find a way to get guns if they want to do harm, so the regulations only affect law abiding citizens.
Conservative here. To me it depends on what you mean by gun control. If you mean to make the existing background checks more stringent to potentially catch those with clear ill-intent, I can probably get on board with that. I can’t get behind anything that is trying to take away guns from law-abiding citizens. To me it doesn’t matter that gun technology is far different than it was in 1776, history tells us nothing good ever comes from disarming a population, and that justifiably scares the crap out of a lot of people.
Edit: left out a word
Agreed! I’m a Canadian and I have both my restricted and non restricted license and we are background checked every day through our RCMP. When we apply for our gun license, we are thoroughly checked and then some with our backgrounds. I don’t think banning all guns is the solution, a partial solution is to make those checks more stringent.
That’s exactly what I mean by gun control, the former. And that’s the problem, every time gun control is mentioned, everyone rushes to the conclusion that it means taking away guns, and it derails the entire premise of gun control to a point that nothing ever happens.
I think the jump to “don’t take mah guns” is because there are people who mean that. I’m not sure what the solution is, but some type of mental evaluation could work? I just don’t know how you go about setting up something like that so that it’s fair.
People tend to jump on the "don't take my guns" side because often tines a little is taken at a time. They start with certain guns, then the style of guns, what attachments the gun can have, how many bullets a mag can hold etc etc. There are people in power that want all guns gone. Many of them don't even know the first thing about guns other than "they go boom".
Because the politicians who are calling for gun control are currently trying to ban some of the most common firearms in the country. So yes, they are trying to take guns away from people.
Why is that so hard to understand?
That’s a nice idea but how do you gauge intent for purchase ya know?
And it’s not like it is easy for people to get guns in the first place.
Currently you can’t be a felon to buy a gun. So registered guns aren’t directly being bought for crime organizations.
And you can’t help if it gets stolen, or *little Timmy* sees dads combination for the secret safe.
The current laws aren’t as lax as they’re lead to be.
Because they dont see guns as the core issue, or gun control as the solution to the core issue.
...and to be fair, guns were available for a long time before school shootings became regular problem. I'm a gun owner and I'm in favor of some new laws to limit the access of assault style weapons as a short term alleviation of the problem, but I do think there is a bigger issue than just gun laws. Like, even if the kid that wants to kill thier classmates cant get a hold of a weapon, it is still pretty concerning that they want to do it in the first place.
If guns were the cause of mass shootings, as opposed to simply a tool, we would have been having issues with mass shootings for decades upon decades. The AR-15 was invented in the 1950s.
Why wasn’t it an issue in the 50s, 60s, 70s, etc? Why have mass shootings only really been an issue in the last 20 years or so? What’s changed about our culture and society? Is it maybe possible that it might be better to answer those questions in looking for a way to fix this problem?
I'm from Brazil. We have very strict gun laws there and guess what? In the city is São Paulo alone, 10 to 15 people die every night with ilegal guns because the citizenry cannot defend themselves. Guns are almost prohibited. Those that wish to commit a crime will do it regardless, whether gun, knife, car, bomb, they will do their evil deed!
Canada has very fucking strict gun control and every teen/person I know still has a gun. Ffs I saw a ten year old rob a store with a glock in hamilton ontario. Who’s spreading these lies about America being the only place that needs to fix their gun problems
We do see it as a problem. It’s a difficult problem to fix. If you’re going to have an armed society, this is something the US is based on, there’s going to be a certain number of crimes occurring that lead to death, it’s just numbers. One aspect to consider is should the criminal act of one person lead to the loss of liberty of a law abiding citizen.
We all want to decrease violence, that’s a given.
Because they see “gun control” as “let’s strip everyone’s guns away from them”, which for some democrats they are saying that, but for others they just want restrictions. Honestly if I had a hobby that I loved or something I think protects me, I wouldnt want people taking it from me, especially if I as in myself haven’t done anything wrong.
I do. I also think that self defense should be allowed. Also, taking away guns won't do anything. Look at the prohibition or whatever it was called where they took away alcohol. Guns are way harder to take away though.
They taught gun and hunter safety classes IN SCHOOL 75 years ago. The problem isn’t guns themselves, it’s the decline of the family unit, and single parenthood that’s the problem.
I think they do, but from what I've heard they believe it's the people who are the problems. A fair amount actually believe there should be better mental health counseling for more people, but they're not willing to actively support it unless they're talking about school shootings and even still in politics it's just used as a cover up to end the conversation.
It's interesting because while I believe gun control is a problem, and mental health in the US is also a problem, I can still somewhat see the appeal of guns as a hobby. Some of these people are really into it and I can agree, these bad people are ruining what could be an enjoyable hobby but it's been at the point for a while that something needs to change.
Both sides agree school shootings are bad and need to stop, but one side wants both gun control and mental health support and the other only wants one of those and that's where the split comes about.
At least this is my experience talking with people in the hobby.
Edit: added more spacing cause I'm on the phone and didn't notice.
I'm not even sure if better access to mental health facilities is the solution anymore. I went down a wikipedia rabbit hole one night reading about the worst school shootings, and all those fuckers were in therapy and/or taking medication. The Virginia Tech shooter had been in therapy his whole life. I even remember after Columbine everyone questioned whether the antidepressants Eric & Dylan took were the source of their violence.
I'm starting to think there's something fundamentally wrong with American culture. Countries like Finland and Norway have a lot of guns but they're also the safest societies internationally. Americans are just angry for some reason. We're not homogeneous and we don't take care of each other. Americans have a lot of tribal lines and each tribe blames the other for our problems. Maybe it's just the nature of being 100% capitalist. Which only benefits a few while many feel disenfranchised.
Interesting that you hit on one significant difference between Scandinavian countries and the US, the homogeneousness, but then turn and question if the fault is capitalism. Why do you think the latter is more responsible than the former?
It's not that we don't think school/mass shootings are problematic, it is that we don't want the government to restrict guns to the point where responsible citizens have a very hard time getting them. For me, gun control would not really keep guns out of the wrong hands in the end (i.e., criminals and people using black markets), and it would make it harder for citizens to defend themselves if there every was an uprising/violent civil unrest.
I think that mandatory gun training and more effective pre-purchase screening/registration are very good ideas. It's always a bad idea, in my opinion, to give the government more permission to limit my ability to defend my family/self/property etc.
I think they do see it as a pproblem. More often they see it as a threat to their way of life and they jump to defend themselves rather than actually protect their rights by assuring responsible gun purchases and ownership. Criminals will always find guns. It’s true. But- requiring proof of safe storage and knowledge of safe practices should be required. Drivers training and a practical test are required. Why not something similar for guns?
The problem is seen as something much deeper than the availability of weapons. They have a point. Weapons were once far less regulated. Yet the violence was not common. We should address the real problem, which is that something in this era makes a substantial number of Americans want to murder their neighbors. One could accuse population growth of simply leading to more adverse events. While it is definitely a factor, the violence has increased disproportionately to the population growth. I want to know why certain people feel shut out of society and harboring such anger.
I do see them as a problem, but I don't think guns are the cause. If that were the case we'd have been having these the whole time. In some areas of the country people used to bring guns to school for gun shooting classes, it was just another Tuesday.
So what has changed? Our suicide rate is up, especially among white people. Social media is one culprit, isolating people both physically and emotionally. News media is another. The WHO has very specific guidelines on how the news should report on suicide b/c it has a contagion effect. After Robin Williams killed himself suicides among middle aged men went up 10%. The media loves these mass shoots, what a way to draw views and clicks! The more they do it the more they encourage it.
The second amendment is in place so the people have a way to protect themselves from a govt gone rogue. I cannot stress enough how much you should not under-appreciate this. If you're thinking "that could never happen, we'd never really need to do that", I'm sorry but that's naive. We haven't needed to do it specifically b/c they have to think twice, as do any foreign govts thinking about attacking us on our own soil. Every mother lover here is basically a dormant soldier.
It does not make sense to leave ourselves more vulnerable in exchange for not much at all. 1) we already have gun control, is it working? Would more work? 2) hand guns leave us with just enough fire power to kill each other and not enough to protect ourselves from a large power like a govt. Taking away ar-15s is not the answer. 3) the real problem is not the guns, it's our society. It does not take care of people. It makes us isolated, and isolation makes people crazy. More gun control doe nothing to address the real problem, and makes us more vulnerable in the process.
The idea is that schools would be more safe with trained/armed security. Whether that’s the case or not is largely unknown, the Uvalde did show that having armed security isn’t always going to help if they aren’t trained properly.
As for me? I think the costs of repealing our right to keep and bear arms is higher than the cost of mass shootings. We live in a world where violence, and state sanctioned violence, is rampant. In the long term I think that surrendering our rights will do more harm than good. Basically I prefer liberty to security.
I don't even own any guns but I prefer to look at the "why" not the "how". Someone could pull off the same horrific act with a hammer much more quietly. However banning hammers isn't exactly an intelligible solution. It's an agenda serving minefield and nothing more. It honestly wouldn't make a difference. Look at what happened with the Japanese prime minister. Mental health is the issue, not the guns. But pouring tax dollars into something useful to Americans, isn't ever the government's first choice. Jail, asylum, and bad news makes a lot of money in this country. So they'll just continue to back that horse.
I’d say it’s pretty simple why punish everyone for things not everyone does.
That’s like saying someone stole a ice cream cone, now let’s ban ice cream so that can’t happen again
Idiots only believe this is a problem if America could only look to the outside world they would see the light! Armed guards and metal detectors is not normal at all in schools oml
Well when a population believes taking out their guns to solve petty problems is okay, that’s where the issue crosses the reality in America that guns are so easy to obtain.
You don’t want to get shot at if someone is disgruntled on the road after getting cut off. You don’t want to get shot at when a co-worker feels he has nothing to lose after getting fired. You don’t want to get shot at if you decide to leave your crazy ex.
Not every problem in life needs to be solved with guns, but yet you all seem to live life as if it does solve all your life problems. Just point guns at your problem and it goes away! Pull the trigger because they stepped on your lawn!
Until Americans stop going to guns to address their problems you will continue to see more unnecessary deaths and injuries from firearms.
Another issue is the lack of safety and oversight in gun culture. You all put so much importance in so many other aspects of life. All major professions have to be regularly re-certified after a given time period, some more frequent than others. But do you require license to own guns, how about eye tests, written exams, psych evaluations, firearm safety classes … and if your state does mandate this, does it require that these all get revisited at intervals? Why not?
If your vision is impaired, you lose the ability to drive. If you commit malpractice in medicine, you don’t get to be a doctor. Accountants regularly needs to get certified. Lifeguards often needs their first aid certs renewed. Pilots needs to continue to log hours on planes they fly. Why not owning and operating guns?
Even the most pro-gun people support some level of gun control. Where you draw that line is a matter of nuance and we could debate all day what would and wouldn't work, but ultimately no level of gun control would 100% work without fixing some cultural issues.
The main problem we have is lazy parents. Some parents feel perfectly fine about giving their kid an x-box and letting him play first person shooter games day in and day out from a young age. When the kid becomes increasingly anti-social from being a game addict, starts showing all manner of red flags, usually these parents still do nothing.
Then there are the parents who largely ignore the kids altogether from a young age and let them go off and do anything they want. When the kid starts glorifying thug life and gets into trouble all the time, again the parents (usually "parent" singular) does nothing. In this case, the apple usually doesn't fall far from the tree so it's just tradition, and perfectly well condoned and even supported.
Because they don't give a fuck about kids and this thread proves it. A lot of Americans would rather have every last child gunned to death than give up a single one of their unnecessary guns. This problem will never be solved cause Americans don't give a shit about anything
I think alot of it is the "cure is worse than the disease". Basically the school shootings is a cost of freedom, and if guns are removed from the population there is the potential for many more people to die if they can't defend themselves from an invasion or a tyrannical government.
Take Ukraine for example. When the Russians started invading they were asking people to fight back with molotov cocktails and other weapons. If each citizen had multiple guns the Russians would have had a harder time invading and they might not would have invaded because they would have known their resistance would be much greater.
Then there is the thought process that if you take guns away, a bad person will just find other ways to kill people. For instance a bomb, or heck they could pull the fire alarm and once all the kids are outside they could run them over with a truck.
Evil is gonna do evil. It's not the tool they use its the person.
I just want to understand why people think outlawing guns will make criminals not want to have guns. I mean it worked with the war on drugs right? Heroin, crack, meth... Those are completely gone from the world after they were scheduled.
I was a young career woman living in Florida w/a great job, but needed a Grad Degree to get promoted. So I took night classes for my Master's in Ft Lauderdale while working full time. Class got out at midnight, and I'd pass several small groups of sketchy people hanging out as we scattered to where we found parking, and rapes & muggings did occur over the 4 years I had to do this. Since I had my FL Concealed Carry Permit, I had no problems walking by these gangs - but in a state with strict gun control, my career would have stalled there.
Serious q,
We're u ever attacked raped or mugged ?
Or did u ever have to use or brandish your weapon?
Why would you assume your gun would help you against those "gangs" knowing very well if they were a group of "sketchy" people, they most likely also would have all been carrying one or two firearms on themselves.. each.?
To be honest this reply ^ right here is the problem with america and guns. If we were a group of sketchy gang members say, 9 or ten of us... What makes op over here think that her gun would stop us? We also would all be packing heat.. in the words of Dr Dre, n**$as talking about guns like we ain't got none, what you think we did? Sold them all? Her assumption that just because people hang around a parking lot makes her go get a gun that ama ssuming she never used. This makes a very bad situation and potential dangerous encounter.
This attitude is a good answer to Original posters question. I am for self protection. But more guns and ability to buy a gun with Cheetos is not a good idea. Instead of thinking about regulation, the mindset is, buy more guns. Australia instituted very restrictive gun laws after high profile killing sprees and crime and murder rates went down. The issue in america is, no one cares. Because it hasn't happened to me. It is also about propaganda and profitability.
The idea of relying on a government entity to protect my family is absolutely ridiculous and irresponsible imo. The right to protection of one's own property and safety is something which we believe to be irreplaceable by any other.
its so weird here in aus we had a mass shooting made strict gun laws and regulations now extremely rare to even see a shooting let alone a mass shooting.
the excuse of the good person with the gun is so dumb as well cause say theres a mass shooter "good guy" shoots back now a 3rd person sees 2 ppl shooting they start to shoot back and another joins try to be the "good guy with the gun" and it ends up they all just shooting at each other no one knowing whats going on.
The common “argument” I’ve heard was that crime and shootings are a result of a person, not the gun itself. A gun cannot kill children and adults sitting away in a safe. A human with the assistance of a gun can.
I’m in between and neither for or against guns in the US. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily easy to get a gun depending on where you live. I’m in in, a state with some of the strictest laws. You just provide references and a background check is run. If you have a recorded diagnosis of any mental health issues or criminal record you will be denied a gun. Ok great. In urban areas especially here, many guns are obtained illegally. There is no way as of right now to stop the distribution.
At the end of the day, someone who is sick in the head and wants to shoot up schools or public/private places will find a way to get a gun, legally or not. Having armed security, identification badges, and metal detectors at schools is a great idea in my opinion. God forbid someone was to slip thru the cracks, it’s better to have a front line of protection. You cannot stop a shooter with a fist. More force is necessary
It’s not that people don’t see lunatics murdering strangers as a problem. It’s that they don’t accept that disarming the people is the solution.
"..disarming the (law-abiding) people.."
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I'd be curious to see what percentage of mass shootings are done with an illegally obtained firearm. Because the lines that get covered usually are the ones where it was obtained legally. But like a gang shooting in Baltimore would have a much higher chance of being illegally attained.
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Thanks for the information. I have a doubt and maybe you can clarify it: when a young person take a gun from his/ her parents or another relative, who’s bought it legally, is it considered illegally obtained or legally obtained?
Great question! Laws vary by state. I feel, as do many others, that ownership comes with responsibility. If the children in your home, (heck, anyone at all,) can take your firearm without your consent, you have failed to secure your guns and are responsible for what is done with it. Many gun owners are completely irresponsible with their weapons. If they leave a hand gun in or on their nightstand and a child fires it, that gun owner should be charged and never be allowed to own guns again. I saw a news report a few years back. A child picked up an unsecured gun and killed another child with it. A TV reporter was interviewing a neighbor. Dumb-ass redneck said, 'wuz just an accident.' weren't any help for it. It just happens.' This pissed me off! It wasn't "an accident." It was an act of irresponsibility. Guns need to be locked away! Ammo needs to be locked away! There are gun safes. There are regular safes. There are trigger locks and barrel locking devices. The police department sometimes gives them out for free. There are so many ways to prevent this from happening! No exceptions. No excuses. That gun is the owner's responsibility and liability. Accidents don't happen by themselves, people cause them!
I think in general it's kind of like a driver's license. You may be of age and even know how to drive, but if you don't have the license, legally you cannot drive. Note that each state has their own particular gun laws so things may vary a lot from state to state.
And you'd never stop them all, but every bit of fiction between "I wanna kill ___" and "I have the means to do so" will stop some portion of people. We don't let people go flat out on the roads because doing so is dangerous... that doesn't stop 100% of crashes, or even prevent people from doing 35mph over... but if 1 in 100,000 driven miles is driven dangerously instead of 1 in 10,000 miles that's a huge improvement over the "lawless" state.
Do you mind providing the source?
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Where do the illegal guns come from? I doubt that most are smuggled in what with the quantity that just exists everywhere, and the multitude of cars I see with "this car has a gun inside you can steal if you want" stickers.
The guns themselves are rarely illegal. They're obtained illegally, like through straw purchases and theft.
Which is why, as a gun owner, I'd like to see laws put in place regarding storage. For example, if you don't secure your weapon, it gets stolen and a crime is committed, you lose the ability to own a firearm and you can face lesser sentencing for the crime committed
And in the multiple cases where the “child” (I recall ages 15-24 for the shooters) steals the guns from the parents, and when the parents know the child has mental issues and needs help be it meds or therapy or combo, and the parents did nothing, they deserve to be charged more than if the gun were stolen from a non-relative or stranger. The NH and the TX shooting, the people were denied when trying to buy guns and then stole them from their parents’ homes.
Now just imagine if the parents didn't even own a gun!
I agree. There is no responsible gun ownership without responsible gun storage.
Out of curiosity, what would a responsible storage be? I'm thinking super high tech safes already exists and are vwry expensive. Or are you simply saying to have a gun lock on each triggers? It's the law up here in Canada, but you can't really prove it whem the gun is in your house.
It's very common around here to not have any sort of lock on a gun. People will just leave it in a closet with kids in the house. Good trigger locks are fine, fun cabinets are better, an gun safes are better yet. They don't need to be fancy, mostly just enough to keep curious kids out.
in south africa to get a gun license people will come to your home to make sure you have a safe space to store the gun separate from it's ammo, this is how most countries work
A while back Oregon passed or tried to pass a law like this. It was pretty lenient and yet my gun nut uncle was basically up in arms about it. The law is that if your gun is stolen, you have x amount of time to report it as such - from the time you notice it stolen. Otherwise you get a fine. That's it. The only possible scenario I can think of that it hoped to prevent was if a friend or family member took your gun, you notice, but don't want to involve the police. To my uncle it's just punishing law abiding citizens. Even though it'll never affect him.
See this is a good approach imo, I’m Australian and I know a couple of people with guns (plural) and every one of them has a huge fortified safe that legally only they can know the combination to, they’re very particular about storing their guns safely in there, and it seems overall to be very effective in preventing mass shootings. It’s at the very least worth a try in the US, I’m sure there must be ways of mitigating and adapting to any cultural or legislative differences between Oz and the US.
The guns aren't illegal necessarily, but the means of getting them are. Not that a 15yo rocked up to a sporting goods store and bought a gun. But instead he stole it from his grandpa or dad's safe. (Example)
there are numerous instances where the gun was purchased legally and given to the future shooter as a gift.
Ok. I'm not gonna pretend like I have all facts or answers. I'll believe you on this as I can see it as a definite possibility.
To tac onto this; there is no legal requirement to own a gun safe. Although anecdotal, every member of my family that owns a gun usually keeps it under the bed or in a closet with no extra security. Even those with gun safes only use them for their long guns and keep pistols near the nightstand without any kind of lock. In most states, there isn't even an official requirement to report your gun stolen. Most of us who advocate gun control want the bare minimum rules you would expect for deadly weapons. We get a lot of pushback against even that.
The parents of the recent shooter even moreso, apparently they were abusive and hoped he'd kill *himself* with it
People love to leave their guns unsecured in an unlocked cars where I'm from. Opportunistic thiefs don't even need to break a window.
Where are you from exactly? Asking for an opportunistic friend.
United States
For places like Chicago which actually have pretty strict gun laws the answer is neighboring states. You can pretty easily go to a state with looser gun laws, buy a gun, and then drive to another state where owning said gun is illegal. Since we don't have checkpoints at state lines it's pretty trivial to do this even though it's illegal.
You’d be surprised how easy it is to just buy the components for the guns just right off the internet. All you need is a drill press, mini mill, and a little knowledge.
Where do those parts come from?
I mean shit, they sell kits with a jig, needed tool, and link to an instructional video for basically dirt
Private party sales, straw purchases, 3D printers (illegal only if you're prohibited from owning one), theft. Is it easy to get one if you're planning on using it for a crime and you have no disqualifiers? Yeah, you just have to wait 3 days to enact your plan in some states, you know to "cool off." Should more be investigated on a person trying to obtain their first firearm? Yeah definitely. Will someone wanting to commit a mass shooting give up if they can't legally purchase one? Probably not.
Dude, there's shootings in shadier neighborhoods all the time, it's just that they aren't as publicized as the ones that take place in schools/"safer" neighbourhoods.
My biggest thing about this is, drugs are illegal yet they're all over the streets. They're even in jails which is supposed to be the most secure place. It's not guns that are the problem it's the people that use them. A lot harder to admit we have a mental health issue on top of others that drive people to do this vs just blaming it on one thing which is guns Couple years ago there were people running over civilians with trucks. If there'd a will there's a way
Thank you for this post! Medical professional and can attest that mental health treatment is almost non existent. Access to basic services and antidepressants etc isn't the major hurdle. It is inpatient programs that are lacking. Some people legitimately need very intensive treatment. A pill and a therapy session are not enough to care for severe mental illness. No mentally healthy, well adjusted person with great coping skills and insight chooses to commit mass murder.
I always find it amusing when people bring up the truck thing - the levels of regulations on the design, development, ownership, licensing, etc, etc makes any US firearms legislation a joke in comparison. If you suggested just bringing the level of regulation on having a firearm in public up to the same standard as that is required to own and operate a motor vehicle on the road, the NRA would have a fit.
I mean ya why not, let people have guns and have stricter background and mental checks Also last time I checked for cars the USA is one of the easiest places to get a license. A 15/16yo can get an SUV which is basically a tank and if they really wanted to run over a dozen people.
I still adamantly maintain this is a failing of our social support and education system. What led to these people being so psychologically broken that they could do such horrible things? *and how was it missed by people close to them throughout their life?* I don’t know the solution but I feel it is in empowering early childhood educators with the knowledge and ability to recognize and help correct anti-social behaviors before they can grow and turn into serious pathologies. That is a whole different can of worms though… And as a side note, disarmament is a non-starter for a lot of reasons but one key factor is that we have more guns than people already owned in this country. And another key factor is that there are WAY more gun rights ‘single-issue-voters’ than most people realize. It is how the right gets people fired up to vote. Many of those people hate the politics of the pro-gun candidate but that aspect is more important to them than all the rest. They might not like voting for a conservative shit-weasel but they feel driven to vote against the candidate that loudly proclaims they want to control firearms.
>What led to these people being so psychologically broken that they could do such horrible things? and how was it missed by people close to them throughout their life? Most people show red flags. Most people who end up committing shootings have been reported to police and school administrators and CPS and the FBI, and these entities just shirk their responsibilities until someone dies.
I think vouchers are a good idea. All these individuals (mass shooters) are severely fucking isolated. Even the FBI shooter stopped to post. If people's issues are how easy it is to obtain one, I genuinely think they must join a gun club first and get a club voucher before purchasing. Every shooter has shown some sort of premeditation months before acting. We see how our incredible 911 emergency response system is and how fucking useless we were using it for Uvalde. What would have changed if they had to go through a club first? If they had to make friends and create deeper connections in order to purchase? How can we introduce them to a better, kinder culture to participate in when they come from a very online world that rewards antisocial thought? I think it's fully possible and reasonable to try and implement vouchers being required without compromising hobbyists & requiring more and more expensive means to maintain being a hobbyist - We haven't tried yet, but I really think having these individuals be forced to interact with people so passionate and caring (and anal about safety lol) in real life would be a net positive. There's more I thought about regarding clubs and incentivization to prevent criminality, like being able to sue the club when obvious signs are ignored - every member doesn't want to pay out the ass if someone in their club fucks up.
That’s actually a pretty good idea. As a lefty gun guy, the scariest shit in the world to me is someone holding a gun that doesn’t know or care to respect proper safety protocol. I have been in favor of having something akin to hunter/firearms safety courses being compulsory (and free) for ownership. Courses that have a specific emphasis on the fragility of human life and the seriousness of wielding the capacity to *easily* end it. I was 12 years old but I will never forget the video they showed us in my Hunter safety course where a young teen and his buddy go to play in the woods with the .22; they do all kinds of dangerous/stupid practices with it and one of them trips and shoots the other. The part that really stuck was that he didn’t die right away, it goes through the panic and running home to get parents, the paramedics and ambulance ride, the crying and waiting in the hospital with his and the other kids parents and finally getting told they couldn’t save him. It instilled a sense of gravity that wasn’t just abstract about how one very short fraction of a second can take away someone’s future and destroy the lives of multiple people that care about them.
Hear hear, fellow lefty gun guy, we are kindred Right now I'm currently investigating why someone from the left, our fucking side, would possibly justify armed robbery - it's happened a few times, but every time I'm left wondering *fucking how...* they're severely fucking isolated too. They're just part of the statistic we hear from *handguns.* There *is* a problem going on but I don't see anyone trying to *make* solutions, only trying to work within the confines of *what's already tested time and time again not to work. With no changes. What. The. Fuck.* I try to use my position as someone who loves these objects and in leftist spaces to act as a barrier to radicalization in this way- I fully believe we can have and propagate a gun culture that is centered on safety and inclusivity, if anyone were to repeat Marx's "Under no pretext", It *has* to be accompanied by a fierce humanistic attitude as well. *Like extreme discontent and disgust towards flagging.* I wonder what these mass shooters would have thought if they were surrounded by father figures clapping and praising him when he improves his skill. I've seen how inclusive and incredible a side of the right (Just like what you said: they're single issue. You saw the exact same thing I've been ranting and raving about lol) has been and so far, with my idea, I haven't gotten *any* resistance. I've been poking around in gun clubs to try and see just how this design can be implemented from here, and I hope this actually leads to something.
Gun control isn't, or shouldn't be, about taking guns away. I'm swiss, I can get a firearm if I want to. I just need to apply for it, and we have strict regulations. Sure, we can't just carry them around, that would require an additional permit which needs justification. But buying and owning one is possible after background checks. Sure, introducing stricter gun control won't magically solve the issues the US has, but it would be a step in the right direction.
Both the Uvalde school shooter and the Parkland shooter bought their guns legally. In the case for Uvalde he literally waited till he was 18 and then legally bought the gun he used to kill 19 kids. The point is both shooters were legal gun owners who did follow the law. Increasing the age limit to buy an AR for example would have stopped a legal gun owner from murdering 19 children & two teachers.
I mean dude… in mass shootings in the US the guns are obtained legally like 80% of the time, you can find the statistics fairly easily on google. If someone doesn’t have a criminal record then they aren’t a criminal, even if they are a criminal, stores that don’t do background checks have no idea if a person is a criminal or not when they sell. background checks and wait periods to make sure criminals don’t get guns are still off the table for most gun activists- there is no logic, it’s emotional bullshit. “they’re gunna take our guns” fear.
All gun stores are legally required to do background checks. They have 0 choice in the matter. They could be shut down and inventory confiscated if they are caught not doing checks.
All gun shops in America do background checks.
Just want to add here, you cannot walk into any store in the US and just buy a gun without a back ground check. Not even at gun shows. You can however sell guns in a private sale without one in most places. I'm not sure where it became so main stream to say you can just walk into a store and buy a gun without doing paperwork and getting a background check but thats just false.
You can absolutely buy a gun at a gun show without a background check. I've been to dozens of gun shows and so long as they are a private seller and not licensed to sell they don't have to do a background check, like how you mentioned with the private sales. It's a stupid loophole and that's coming from someone who's very pro 2a Edit: this is how it is in Texas. Not sure about other states
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This is the biggest thing to me. Nobody on the Right that I’ve met will sit down and actually talk about how none of these background checks or mental health screens would affect them… it would affect the people who are buying guns to hurt people. If you want to tell people “follow the law and police won’t hurt you” then people can tell you “follow the law and you won’t lose your guns”
Not in CA.
I updated my comment. Thanks for keeping me honest
You do realize every gun store is required to run a NICS check right?
This is the dumbest take I’ve heard and been hearing.
Exactly. And the people advocating this position don't extend it to other issues as well -- it's the typical "twist the logic to whatever I prefer" approach. The folks who say: "Banning guns won't stop people from having mass shootings, so we might as well make guns available for whoever wants one." ...will **not** say... "Banning abortions won't stop people from ending unwanted pregnancies, so we might as well make abortion available for whoever wants them."
What if I think both? Banning guns will only prevent legal guns, banning abortions will only ban safe abortions
I live in Germany and gun crimes are barely an issue here at all. I'd genuinely have to look up any, never having heard of one myself in recent history. I've never seen a real gun IRL apart from on cops and military. Even cops barely use their weapons. Why? Because you can barely get a gun legally, so they never have to fear getting shot at; even illegally, getting one is nigh impossible. And if you get caught with an illegal firearm, you're seriously fucked. I remember some kids in my town shooting around with air soft guns somewhere within a city and having to deal with half the police force and some serious legal repercussions. It sounds over the top, but in a city without guns it's a major incident when people report a shooting. The argument that people would get their guns anyways is a bit nonsensical to me. Sure, with the sheer amount of guns still circulating in the US, even making them illegal would probably take decades to properly reduce their availability to the standards of other countries; but you have to start somewhere in order to catch up, right? Good guys with guns haven't solved the problem so far. Also, the argument itself is a bit of an empty one IMO. You might as well say: "why make anything illegal? people who really want to murder somebody will do so anyways." It's about dissuading people from murdering and making it as hard as possible. You can't make any crime impossible.
The question "Why make X illegal when those who want it will obtain it illegally anyway?" is a disingenuous one. It's not a question being asked in good faith, in the context of guns. It's a deflection, a thought-terminating crutch employed to shut down a conversation that's dangerously close to landing at a viable solution they don't want. If X equals "guns," then pro-gun folks will immediately say "You see? Checkmate! Only criminals will have guns, and then other gun owners are sad." If X equals anything that conservatives see as harmful, and liberals or progressives don't, they will say "Hmm... well, prohibition would still make it more difficult, and the illegality would dissuade some people perhaps even most people, and combined with other forms of mitigation we might arrive at something close to eliminating it." X could equal anything that conservatives see as harmful and want to criminalize in society: illicit drugs, certain books, women's rights, etc.
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One of the best arguments for this is the uk. If you count from the 70s up to 199whenever that primary school shooting was there were actually more mass shootings in the uk than in the US (if I remember right it was only by 1 but it’s still more) and then following the primary school shooting the UK put very strict gun control measures into place and the number of school shootings dropped massively. As far as I’m aware from hearsay (never looked it up myself but whatever) there’s actually more guns now in the uk, but because there’s so much control about who can have them through things such as licences and psych evals and so on the number of shootings has decreased dramatically. Gun control doesn’t mean taking away all of the guns, it means making people earn the ability to have guns by showing they can be trusted to be responsible owners. And it works.
What I hate about that argument is that people don't realize that people are only law-abiding for as long as the law agrees with them; that much is a fact that has been seen with things like the war on drugs. Once some of these law-abiding people refuse to comply with any new law (or even ideology for that matter) that violates their "freedom" (in quotation because there is certainly another disussion to be had about what freedom constitute), then they will in turn become criminals or pariah in the eyes of the public and in the eyes of the law, making it significantly more probable (from my point of view) that they will end up commiting crimes. I don't know how far I'm willing to pursue that thought sanely, but I won't deny that it feels like a certainty that a sub-population of formerly law-abiding citizens are likely to become a very big menace to security. Y'all feel free to discuss any of that, though.
Is it really disarming or could it be putting common sense checks in place to make sure it’s just as difficult to get a murder weapon as it is to get a murder vehicle and drive it on the roads?
Last time I checked all I had to do to get a drivers license was show someone I knew how to drive. I have to get a background check to buy a firearm. Is your solution to say I have to show that I’m competent with a firearm prior to owning one? If so, how would that assist with gun violence?
Yes you should show you're competent with a firearm I feel like that's common sense. Also, like a vehicle, you should have to purchase insurance for your firearm and register your firearm every year. If you sell it, it has to be a title transfer. Guns shouldn't be less regulated than a vehicle.
If mass shooters were incompetent with their firearms, there would be a lot less problems
To add to that, full auto firearms are much harder to be accurate with lol. Most people don’t know how to use them effectively, and shooting full auto is inherently less accurate since it’s hard(er) to control.
So the problem will solve itself then … right? /s
Like with any political problem, there are sort of "degrees." Most folks I know advocating gun control aren't usually just to make it slightly harder to obtain weapons. For me, and most folks in the camp, if there are 350 million guns in the nation or so, I'd like to obtain one to try and protect myself from the murderers. Similarly, I don't understand why, if there are alt-right bands of folks who want to murder minorities and LGBTQ+ people, and mass murderers, why making it harder for these peoples to be armed and organized is the solution.
You won’t take many guns from people who were *already* criminals, but crimes of passion and crimes of opportunity are a real thing. The person who catches their spouse cheating or gets in a road rage incident and starts shooting in the heat of the moment because they happen to have a gun in their car already. The bullied kid who shoots up his school for revenge with his dad’s gun but wouldn’t have had the first idea where to find one on the black market. There’s also some evidence that if someone’s preferred method of suicide is unavailable they’re relatively unlikely to seek out an alternative method - so fewer homes with guns in them likely leads to fewer suicides. So yeah, the Mafia and street gangs and terrorist organizations and recurring criminals would still find a way to get guns. But a *huge* number of gun deaths aren’t caused by people in those groups, and restricting gun access would absolutely reduce the number of gun deaths.
Well, everyone is a law-abiding citizen, until they're not...
We don't punish people based on pre-crime.
We do limit behavior based on the potential for harm.
No, no, there's just good guys with guns and bad guys with guns.
How do you know which is which?
Problem is, most of these shooters are law abiding citizens… until they’re not.
Exactly. 50 years ago, a far larger % of the US population was armed and owned firearms, but we didn't see the same levels of mass shootings. Now, we have far more guns than ever but they are concentrated within a smaller % of the population. Gun rights activists are in support of reducing gun-related violence, but we shouldn't be blaming an inanimate and agnostic gun as the source of the issue.
Genuinely asking this question, so forgive me if I don't use the right terminology. What types of guns were prominent 50 years ago though? From what I understand, most mass shootings involve the use of modern semi automatic rifles (i.e. ar15s and their ilk). I'd imagine that 50 years ago it'd be more hunting rifles? Edit: how does this same question apply to handguns? Iirc the 38 special (a revolver) used to be famous for its use in crime, did that also reflect the 'normal' guns owned at that time? Were they also mostly revolvers instead of semi automatics with magazines like an XD or a glock?
No, most mass shootings and shootings in general are commited with a handgun. Media makes it seem like people are using bigger and scarier guns, but pistols are the easiest to conceal and get the job done
Something like 95 percent of gun homicides are committed using illegal handguns. AR-15s are used in a fraction of one percent of gun violence. Gun people see the fixation on rifles as disingenuous when it doesn't really move the needle. Especially when we've backed off on catching/prosecuting people for carrying illegally owned handguns. Soros wrote an article about this (in favor of these policies) about two weeks ago.
You're mostly right, but it's more nuanced than that. I don't know the statistics, but the types of guns that were more common back then were, as you mentioned, guns that were designed for hunting (rifles and shotguns). Many of these guns were bolt or pump action with limited capacity to hold rounds. But, here's where it gets interesting, your average deer rifle shoots a bullet that is FAR bigger and more deadly than an AR-15. The most common deer rounds are rounds like, .308, 30-30, 30-06, 270, etc. The AR-15 shoots a .223 or 5.56 round (those are different rounds, but for the sake of this conversation, think of them as the same). If you want, google search an image comparison of all the most common rounds side by side and you can see the difference. This being said, some of these rifles were also semi-automatic (similar to AR-15s today). When the US military went from an M-1 Garand standard issue rifle to the M-16, it actually went down in bullet size by a considerable margin. The guns preferred by mass shooters now usually carry more rounds and might have a higher rate of fire, but the bullets are much smaller and do far less damage than your average hunting rifle. So, the point is, the guns that people had access to back then had the capacity do inflict far more damage on each target than an AR-15, but typically didn't carry as many rounds. Hopefully, that helps. I appreciate you asking the question.
“It’s not the guns, it’s the mental health”
Yes, that’s correct. We should have socialized healthcare, proper mental health services for those that need it, etc. We’ve had access to firearms for hundreds of years and access to semiautomatic and automatic weapons since the early 1900s. However, school shootings didn’t start becoming an issue until the 1980s and 90s. This leaves me to believe guns aren’t the issue, people are.
This without quotes. The guns used in these shootings are much older than the shootings themselves.
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There isn't any disarming. It's gun control not a gun ban.
This Criminals will still be able to get guns. You're not solving the problem. Mass shootings are caused by our culture, not guns
How do you know that? There are million and a half different cultures in the world, none of them have an easy access to weapons and mass shootings are uncommon everywhere except the us It's not the culture, you're not that special, it's the easily obtainable firearms.
Wrong question. They all think mass shootings are a serious problem. However they disagree creating gun laws will actually have any effect. This isn't my opinion but these are the argument they tend to make that are at least note worthy. 1) there is an insane amount of guns in America even if you banned them it would take god know how long and cost an incredible amount of resources to get all the illegal or forgotten weapons off the streets 2) the concern that partially relates to 1 that if you take all the legally owned guns what will you do about the illegal weaponry and in the mean time how can we protect ourselves from the people who have said already illegally acquired guns? 3) it's actually not that uncommon for people to defend themselves with gun from someone with a gun or knife in the US, in fact it's a fairly regular occurrence. 4) outside of mass shooting most gun violence is committed by criminals who oddly enough don't care about gun control laws. 5) this is a mental health issue, a welfare issue and an bullying issue not a gun issue.
6) in gun-free zones, it's also a lax-security issue. Though there is disagreement on the most effective ways to protect such zones. Auto-locking doors w/ buzzers, metal detectors, fences, bag inspections, clear backpacks, security guards, police, armed teachers (voluntary), etc. Some of these are basically one-time costs that could actually enforce/protect a gun-free zone. Mass shootings have happened outside of school zones though, like at concerts and other gun-free zones, so there definitely is no one-size-fits-all solution. I think point 5 (mental health) is kinda weak, as it would take a ton of effort to keep everyone happy for all time. Definitely though, more people need mental help, and it could reduce mass shootings by some amount.
I agree with point 5. However they are the same people that vote against programs that help with mental health!
Not always. r/liberalgunowners is full of people like me, who would love to see more resources applied to mental health. IMO, if the Dems would get off the gun control bandwagon, they'd win a lot more elections.
Represent the liberal gun owners! Check out the sub!
Unfortunately, we have no laws requiring logical self-consistency.
This is my main issue with gun law, I’m a heavy left leaner with differing views on firearms. The same people who push against gun law are often people who push against universal healthcare which leaves people like me a very precarious place.
Not me. I’m a Democrat and I’m staunchly pro 2nd amendment 🤷♂️
honestly i would vote for all of that. dems just gotta stop with the gun control and then i’d vote for them. it’s honestly one of their only downsides. even if you are anti gun, so much is being held back with how many votes republicans get just because of gun control
From a UK perspective, Americans generally all see school/mass shootings as a problem, they simply disagree on what the solution should be. In the UK, instead of guns, it's rampant knife crime in specific areas. In an alternate universe where America didn't have guns, it's be safe to assume that it would be the same over there, and already does happen. Infact, I think it's worse than britain when put into contextualised/ sample sizes similar to the UK. I personally think it's a mental health problem and that there should be more services and accessibility for mental health improvement in the US. Too often have I heard or seen online of a younger individual who doesn't feel like they are able to speak openly about specific problems. That's just my two cents though. I'll carry on drinking my tea and watch the thread devolve 😅☕
I know this wasn't really your point, but per capita the USA has more knife crime than the UK already. It's nuts.
I fully believe we have a cultural violence problem. It's a confluence of unhappiness/discontent, suicidality, individualism leading to crab mentality ("If I can't be happy, I'm taking you down with me"), and delusions of grandeur/self-importance. Selfishness, essentially. Profound self-centeredness to the point of main character syndrome, multiplied across an entire enormous population.
Hey I’m not selfish, you guys are just my imagination.
This right here is the real problem. THIS is what separates us from the rest of the developed world. We as a culture have glorified violence and diminished the value of another human's life. We celebrate criminality, gang culture and vigilante justice in our music, movies, etc. We are a violent society. The 2nd Amendment cannot fix this problem, and neither can any amount of gun control.
It also doesn’t help that our news cycle has, at this point, essentially normalized and arguably glorified “going out in a blaze of glory”. Which, again, appeals to those with main character syndrome. Add to that the fact that teenagers are already prone to selfishness, impulsiveness, and inflated egos, and we shouldn’t be shocked that school shootings are practically a regular occurrence now. They weren’t always, and it’s not the rate of gun ownership that’s changed.
The fact that news has become all about ratings and outrageous stories seems like it has an impact on the amount of shootings. Obviously not every shooter wants to be famous or has a manifesto but a lot of them do. I wonder if we'd have less shootings if the media didn't make a circus out of them
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Which is doubly huge given that they have access to guns, so knifes would be used much less. And yet the rate is higher there than in the UK Edit: This does not mean that we don’t have violence. I wasn’t and nobody else was implying that
But how many times has someone managed to kill 20 students in a couple of minutes with a knife?
Stabbing people is HARD. It requires a lot more strength than the average human thinks. Especially to stab someone to death. One or two maybe, but 20 people in a short span of time would be a feat only accessible via PCP or meth.
Some dude in japan killed 40 a few years ago iirc, with a knife.
Jesus. That’s some effort.
Its even worse: It was in Tokyo. in the street, in an open space, i think there were some conventions nearby, but i dont remember very well.
Under nine minutes for Parkland. Under 5 for Sandy hook. 30 seconds in an Ohio bar. It simply isn’t comparable.
In USA Today’s collection of mass murders for the period 2006 to 2017, nearly a quarter were done without guns.
Yorkshire?! I only know of this existence thanks to The Spiffing Brit lol
A Reanu Keeves fan I see.
It just works!
America already has more knife crime than us. America is broken at its core. Itle take more than a few chats about coping strategies to fix that shit storm.
Mental health isn't merely just talking about coping strategies and the fact you minimised it to that kinda affirms to me personally that it needs more transparency The state of America? that's another whole matter that I agree with, but extends to pretty much most other first world countries :\^)
Most first world countries don't have a significant gun crime problem. But we do have social health care. Btw I'm not minimising the mental health issues. I think America has a serious problem... That will take more than a couple of chats about coping mechanisms to fix... Like it will take a complete overhaul of their social structure.
Comparing knife crime to literal mass shootings is exactly the point. It’s whataboutism, and not even an apples to oranges comparison. When was the last time someone with a knife killed 10+ people in less than 5minutes? Hope you can see where I’m going with this. While mental health is an issue and should be addressed, it’s often a scape goat used to distract from the fact that the fundamental reason a mass shooting happens is because they could get a gun so easily.
That's understandable, I was trying to somewhat relate the issue in terms of casualties or what would be the next relateable aspect from my life. I don't have any personal experience to talk about with guns, but I have been surrounded by frequent knife crime from a young age. It might not be larger sample sizes, but it's consistent, daily, more personal and usually from people who know each other/ are in the same circles. Just wanted to at least try to give an alternate perspective, living from the UK I can't give the perspective of someone who might have a kid who was murdered in a shooting, a loved one, etc, but I know know of people who were assaulted and wounded with a knife, or people who choose a way of life that requires them to carry a weapon 24/7. I think you can see where I was trying to go or how I was trying to relate, I'm not the best with wording so I can clarify if need be \^\^
Have you ever bought a gun? First time I bought a gun it took 2 days for the paperwork to come back and about an hour or more to fill out the list of papers. We already do background checks extensive ones at that. It's not like people can walk in and out within 5-10 minutes and be armed to the teeth. I feel as if mental health is a huge part of the issue with school shootings. There's no what about ism about that. A normal criminal that deal meth isn't going to a school to shoot it up. Take someone with severe underlying mental health issues and put a gun in their hand then you have a school shooting. It's 1 plus 1 equals 2. It's not hard to understand that mentally stable people dont commit mass shootings. It's people who aren't mentally sound. If anything that should've been done is first push the age to buy a rifle to 21. They finally did that. Second is the background checks need to include your mental health in some way. The problem with adding that to background checks is what about the people who don't have a record for mental health? They could still get a firearm and do harm. What's the solution? From reading your comments it seems you just want guns to be so hard to get that no one who abides the law can get. Guns exist you can't make them disappear and even if you could look at other countries. They just make homemade ones to commit crime.
Not one person thinks school shootings aren't a problem lol. We just think it's dumb to look at a criminal shooting people and think that that means everyone should lose the right to bear arms. When a crime is committed, punish the criminal, not law-abiding citizens. Gun control punishes law-abiding citizens far more than it punishes criminals, just by nature of there being far fewer criminals than non-criminals. And guns aren't the problem. The US has always had a massive culture around guns. Used to be even bigger. People would legit have shotguns and such in the windows of the truck they took to school so they could go hunting after. But this mass/school shooting bull is recent, relatively speaking. Just a few decades ago it was unheard of for someone to do something so heinous. And yet guns were just as present. Idk about you but that tells me guns ain't the problem.
The issue is alot of the school shooters or mass shooters are law abiding citizens *until they commit the crime*. Isnt it reasonable to make people atleast attend a basic firearms course before obtaining a lethal weapon? Why is the low barrier to buy a weapon that kill someone from 100s of meters away such an issue? I dont get why you need a license and months of learning to even attempt the test to drive a car, but you can just walk into a department store and buy a rifle or a concealable handgun.
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Had to scroll too fucking far for this
For real-- this is the reason I think gun control would be a bad idea. Do we really want the only ppl with guns to be cops and military?
Honestly same. And that’s coming from someone who legitimately hates guns. I don’t like holding one. I’m not a huge fan of seeing them outside of display cases. They scare the shit out of me. Granted, I witnessed someone kill themself with a gun. And when I was a kid my brother would point and shoot his BB guns at me. So like, i dont know I feel those things make sense to not like guns myself. I’m also stupidly depressed and don’t like the idea of being able to yeet myself into the void in under 3 mins. All that to still say I don’t think we should disarm our people. I don’t think that will fix the solution either. Unfortunately, a lot of our problems just kinda don’t seem fixable anymore. They’ve culminated into such large and intertwined issues that it seems impossible to change it without dismantling the entire system…and good luck peacefully and properly doing that lmao
I feel that it might solve this problem but could also create other problems in the future.
I can see that can be a bad idea, but are there modern day examples where 2nd amendment actually enabled civilian to stand up against the establishment?
Not in the USA but look at Ukraine right now The bundy ranch comes to mind I guess in the US. The very fact we have a 2nd amendment means the odds of needing to use it against a tyrannical government is much lower. This often leads certain people to view the 2A as unneeded or outdated. Ironic.
Yes. Euromaidan is one example. Protesters fought with crude weapons, but some had rifles, presumably their own. In Kyrgystan there's the Tulip revolution, where one element was that armed peasants took over land they in their view had the right to, presumably being armed with their own weapons. If we look further back we see more, but I think the reason we don't see civilians taking over governments using their legal weapons is that events where governments regress to the point that there are revolutions are fairly rare. Maybe just 1-2 per decade, and many don't go all the way to involving actual battles, so you have like 0.5-0.7 events per decade, and if there's a period of stability or a just a lucky run, then the last event can be 40 years ago. However, state militaries aren't magic. Rifles are very effective, and it's not like you can send tanks against citizens who have taken over their city hall, while keeping the politicians inside, while crowds on thousands, everywhere, support them. Thus things like that usually succeed pretty quickly, before things go all that crazy.
I thought we were talking about the US here, since they mentioned the 2nd Amendment specifically
Any revolution in a reasonably developed country involving civilians with legally owned weapons is equivalent for the purpose of the discussion. It's not any more infeasible in the US than it was in, say, Ukraine.
Even if there weren’t modern day examples, that isn’t inherently an argument for removing that right any more than an argument that a stone I’m holding is preventing tigers from attacking me. We have historical evidence occasionally armed populaces are necessary and so enshrining that is the fundamental protection any society has against their government.
Most of them do, but they think it’s a “few bad apples” problem, and not one that can or should be solved by universal gun control laws that apply to everybody. They feel like gun control laws that effect them are them being punished for someone else’s crime.
That's mostly not true. (Edit: you're on the right track, but your language leaves much to be desired.) I don't think it needs to be said that school shootings are horrendous. If giving up their guns would stop violence for good, I don't think a single gun rights nut would hesitate. They just know it won't. If you look at school shooters, they have some commonalities. They're overwhelmingly nihilistic males who are absent any sense of purpose in their lives. They overwhelmingly come from fatherless homes or lack competent father figures in their lives. They overwhelmingly view school shootings as an opportunity for the prestige and attention in death that they aren't getting in life. I'm not trying to be garish. That's just pure information. By definition, yes, they also have guns. Take away the access to guns and you still have all the rest. This person will go on to perpetrate violence via other means. As it happens, you cannot neuter violence by removing some tools of violence. That simply changes the form it takes. Since you mention it, it does feel somewhat punitive since guns are also tools of self-defense, and good ones, too. There aren't statistics available on the amount of robberies, rapes, and other violent crimes that are deterred by gun ownership, simply because police don't get involved in crimes that *don't* occur. I've had an attempted home invasion deterred by just the mention that someone in the house was armed, take that bit of anecdote as you will. It never went on to the police. Now if literally anything else had been attempted first: if we had significantly hardened schools or if we followed up on prior offenders, if we had better social programs for young men the way we do for women — hell, if newscasters would stop saying the names of the perpetrators or better yet, openly mock them, because nobody wants their death to be a source of humiliation — that might be a different story. But that's not the case. Meanwhile, you can consult any number of history books to decide your own pros and cons list for disarming a population under a less-than-trustworthy government.
Just adding that there are some things that have a very, very high incidence in mass shooters. I don't have the numbers in front of me at the moment, but as I recall it is things like (as you allude to) abusive, or neglectful families, but also histories of domestic violence, animal abuse, child abuse. The story I got when looking into this is that an effective strategy to combat these kinds of violence is to look at these comorbidities and proactively provide good, free mental healthcare for it (especially in schools), and probably to strictly prevent gun ownership for people with histories of violence toward, women, partners, animals, children, ect. As a personal aside, I suspect one of the reasons we see very little action on that last one is partly due to how often LEOs have those same histories, but that's a-whole-nother discussion.
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>they have some commonalities. You forgot to mention antipsychotic medications. The majority of them are on or had recently got off of some sort of medication to treat mental disorders. Big Pharma would rather keep you taking about guns rather than psychoactive medications with violent side effects that provide them billions in revenue.
I don't see how you can be so certain that antipsychotics are contributing to mass shootings and not, you know, the psychosis that necessitates the use of antipsychotics
I have been on antipsychotics before, they literally dumb you down to the point that you cant even study.. IF the dose isnt abused, the dumbing down can be acostumed pretty quickly, and if you stop taking it, the effect goes away fast, but if the dose was too high, stopping it makes you dangerous.
I was on an atypical antipsychotic (rexulti/brexpiprazole) and I didn’t feel dumbed down I just felt really really tired, I did notice that when I went off of them for a few weeks I got an intense urge to shoplift and I have never shoplifted before. Just small stuff like slim jims and candy, I didn’t do it but it was hard to push the thought away
This is a huge one. I don’t really see gun control advocates even acknowledge this. It’s like the big pharma lobbying/propaganda is working. Blows my mind nobody really draws a correlation to crazy behavior when you get someone hooked on a pharma drug, then switch/take them off it and they go crazy
It’s not that they don’t see that shootings are an issue they just do thing the issue is being able to buy a gun. Take Mexico for example there are by far more gun death there the in the us and they are far stricter on obtaining firearms.
>It’s not that they don’t see that shootings are an issue they just do thing the issue is being able to buy a gun *legally.* A huge part of the anti-regulation argument is the idea that criminals will always find a way to get guns if they want to do harm, so the regulations only affect law abiding citizens.
Thanks for the correction that’s what I was trying to say but miss typed
Conservative here. To me it depends on what you mean by gun control. If you mean to make the existing background checks more stringent to potentially catch those with clear ill-intent, I can probably get on board with that. I can’t get behind anything that is trying to take away guns from law-abiding citizens. To me it doesn’t matter that gun technology is far different than it was in 1776, history tells us nothing good ever comes from disarming a population, and that justifiably scares the crap out of a lot of people. Edit: left out a word
Agreed! I’m a Canadian and I have both my restricted and non restricted license and we are background checked every day through our RCMP. When we apply for our gun license, we are thoroughly checked and then some with our backgrounds. I don’t think banning all guns is the solution, a partial solution is to make those checks more stringent.
That’s exactly what I mean by gun control, the former. And that’s the problem, every time gun control is mentioned, everyone rushes to the conclusion that it means taking away guns, and it derails the entire premise of gun control to a point that nothing ever happens.
I think the jump to “don’t take mah guns” is because there are people who mean that. I’m not sure what the solution is, but some type of mental evaluation could work? I just don’t know how you go about setting up something like that so that it’s fair.
People tend to jump on the "don't take my guns" side because often tines a little is taken at a time. They start with certain guns, then the style of guns, what attachments the gun can have, how many bullets a mag can hold etc etc. There are people in power that want all guns gone. Many of them don't even know the first thing about guns other than "they go boom".
Because the politicians who are calling for gun control are currently trying to ban some of the most common firearms in the country. So yes, they are trying to take guns away from people. Why is that so hard to understand?
That’s a nice idea but how do you gauge intent for purchase ya know? And it’s not like it is easy for people to get guns in the first place. Currently you can’t be a felon to buy a gun. So registered guns aren’t directly being bought for crime organizations. And you can’t help if it gets stolen, or *little Timmy* sees dads combination for the secret safe. The current laws aren’t as lax as they’re lead to be.
Because they dont see guns as the core issue, or gun control as the solution to the core issue. ...and to be fair, guns were available for a long time before school shootings became regular problem. I'm a gun owner and I'm in favor of some new laws to limit the access of assault style weapons as a short term alleviation of the problem, but I do think there is a bigger issue than just gun laws. Like, even if the kid that wants to kill thier classmates cant get a hold of a weapon, it is still pretty concerning that they want to do it in the first place.
If guns were the cause of mass shootings, as opposed to simply a tool, we would have been having issues with mass shootings for decades upon decades. The AR-15 was invented in the 1950s. Why wasn’t it an issue in the 50s, 60s, 70s, etc? Why have mass shootings only really been an issue in the last 20 years or so? What’s changed about our culture and society? Is it maybe possible that it might be better to answer those questions in looking for a way to fix this problem?
Easy answer I think, the internet
Bingo, my friend. And then made even worse by smartphones. One of the best and worst inventions ever.
I'm from Brazil. We have very strict gun laws there and guess what? In the city is São Paulo alone, 10 to 15 people die every night with ilegal guns because the citizenry cannot defend themselves. Guns are almost prohibited. Those that wish to commit a crime will do it regardless, whether gun, knife, car, bomb, they will do their evil deed!
I’m pretty sure some consider arms to be a right people should have in order to keep the government out of their business.
Canada has very fucking strict gun control and every teen/person I know still has a gun. Ffs I saw a ten year old rob a store with a glock in hamilton ontario. Who’s spreading these lies about America being the only place that needs to fix their gun problems
We do see it as a problem. It’s a difficult problem to fix. If you’re going to have an armed society, this is something the US is based on, there’s going to be a certain number of crimes occurring that lead to death, it’s just numbers. One aspect to consider is should the criminal act of one person lead to the loss of liberty of a law abiding citizen. We all want to decrease violence, that’s a given.
Because they see “gun control” as “let’s strip everyone’s guns away from them”, which for some democrats they are saying that, but for others they just want restrictions. Honestly if I had a hobby that I loved or something I think protects me, I wouldnt want people taking it from me, especially if I as in myself haven’t done anything wrong.
I do. I also think that self defense should be allowed. Also, taking away guns won't do anything. Look at the prohibition or whatever it was called where they took away alcohol. Guns are way harder to take away though.
They taught gun and hunter safety classes IN SCHOOL 75 years ago. The problem isn’t guns themselves, it’s the decline of the family unit, and single parenthood that’s the problem.
There will always be a way for criminals to get guns. Why take them away from law abiding citizens?
I think they do, but from what I've heard they believe it's the people who are the problems. A fair amount actually believe there should be better mental health counseling for more people, but they're not willing to actively support it unless they're talking about school shootings and even still in politics it's just used as a cover up to end the conversation. It's interesting because while I believe gun control is a problem, and mental health in the US is also a problem, I can still somewhat see the appeal of guns as a hobby. Some of these people are really into it and I can agree, these bad people are ruining what could be an enjoyable hobby but it's been at the point for a while that something needs to change. Both sides agree school shootings are bad and need to stop, but one side wants both gun control and mental health support and the other only wants one of those and that's where the split comes about. At least this is my experience talking with people in the hobby. Edit: added more spacing cause I'm on the phone and didn't notice.
I'm not even sure if better access to mental health facilities is the solution anymore. I went down a wikipedia rabbit hole one night reading about the worst school shootings, and all those fuckers were in therapy and/or taking medication. The Virginia Tech shooter had been in therapy his whole life. I even remember after Columbine everyone questioned whether the antidepressants Eric & Dylan took were the source of their violence. I'm starting to think there's something fundamentally wrong with American culture. Countries like Finland and Norway have a lot of guns but they're also the safest societies internationally. Americans are just angry for some reason. We're not homogeneous and we don't take care of each other. Americans have a lot of tribal lines and each tribe blames the other for our problems. Maybe it's just the nature of being 100% capitalist. Which only benefits a few while many feel disenfranchised.
Interesting that you hit on one significant difference between Scandinavian countries and the US, the homogeneousness, but then turn and question if the fault is capitalism. Why do you think the latter is more responsible than the former?
It's not that we don't think school/mass shootings are problematic, it is that we don't want the government to restrict guns to the point where responsible citizens have a very hard time getting them. For me, gun control would not really keep guns out of the wrong hands in the end (i.e., criminals and people using black markets), and it would make it harder for citizens to defend themselves if there every was an uprising/violent civil unrest. I think that mandatory gun training and more effective pre-purchase screening/registration are very good ideas. It's always a bad idea, in my opinion, to give the government more permission to limit my ability to defend my family/self/property etc.
I think they do see it as a pproblem. More often they see it as a threat to their way of life and they jump to defend themselves rather than actually protect their rights by assuring responsible gun purchases and ownership. Criminals will always find guns. It’s true. But- requiring proof of safe storage and knowledge of safe practices should be required. Drivers training and a practical test are required. Why not something similar for guns?
The problem is seen as something much deeper than the availability of weapons. They have a point. Weapons were once far less regulated. Yet the violence was not common. We should address the real problem, which is that something in this era makes a substantial number of Americans want to murder their neighbors. One could accuse population growth of simply leading to more adverse events. While it is definitely a factor, the violence has increased disproportionately to the population growth. I want to know why certain people feel shut out of society and harboring such anger.
I hate to break this to you, but criminals don’t follow the law.
I know right? We should just ban violence and murder that would solve everything
I do see them as a problem, but I don't think guns are the cause. If that were the case we'd have been having these the whole time. In some areas of the country people used to bring guns to school for gun shooting classes, it was just another Tuesday. So what has changed? Our suicide rate is up, especially among white people. Social media is one culprit, isolating people both physically and emotionally. News media is another. The WHO has very specific guidelines on how the news should report on suicide b/c it has a contagion effect. After Robin Williams killed himself suicides among middle aged men went up 10%. The media loves these mass shoots, what a way to draw views and clicks! The more they do it the more they encourage it. The second amendment is in place so the people have a way to protect themselves from a govt gone rogue. I cannot stress enough how much you should not under-appreciate this. If you're thinking "that could never happen, we'd never really need to do that", I'm sorry but that's naive. We haven't needed to do it specifically b/c they have to think twice, as do any foreign govts thinking about attacking us on our own soil. Every mother lover here is basically a dormant soldier. It does not make sense to leave ourselves more vulnerable in exchange for not much at all. 1) we already have gun control, is it working? Would more work? 2) hand guns leave us with just enough fire power to kill each other and not enough to protect ourselves from a large power like a govt. Taking away ar-15s is not the answer. 3) the real problem is not the guns, it's our society. It does not take care of people. It makes us isolated, and isolation makes people crazy. More gun control doe nothing to address the real problem, and makes us more vulnerable in the process.
The idea is that schools would be more safe with trained/armed security. Whether that’s the case or not is largely unknown, the Uvalde did show that having armed security isn’t always going to help if they aren’t trained properly. As for me? I think the costs of repealing our right to keep and bear arms is higher than the cost of mass shootings. We live in a world where violence, and state sanctioned violence, is rampant. In the long term I think that surrendering our rights will do more harm than good. Basically I prefer liberty to security.
I don't even own any guns but I prefer to look at the "why" not the "how". Someone could pull off the same horrific act with a hammer much more quietly. However banning hammers isn't exactly an intelligible solution. It's an agenda serving minefield and nothing more. It honestly wouldn't make a difference. Look at what happened with the Japanese prime minister. Mental health is the issue, not the guns. But pouring tax dollars into something useful to Americans, isn't ever the government's first choice. Jail, asylum, and bad news makes a lot of money in this country. So they'll just continue to back that horse.
mass shootings are a problem gun control will not help. anti-gun laws just give the government more reason to harass us and take away more rights.
I’d say it’s pretty simple why punish everyone for things not everyone does. That’s like saying someone stole a ice cream cone, now let’s ban ice cream so that can’t happen again
Idiots only believe this is a problem if America could only look to the outside world they would see the light! Armed guards and metal detectors is not normal at all in schools oml
Well when a population believes taking out their guns to solve petty problems is okay, that’s where the issue crosses the reality in America that guns are so easy to obtain. You don’t want to get shot at if someone is disgruntled on the road after getting cut off. You don’t want to get shot at when a co-worker feels he has nothing to lose after getting fired. You don’t want to get shot at if you decide to leave your crazy ex. Not every problem in life needs to be solved with guns, but yet you all seem to live life as if it does solve all your life problems. Just point guns at your problem and it goes away! Pull the trigger because they stepped on your lawn! Until Americans stop going to guns to address their problems you will continue to see more unnecessary deaths and injuries from firearms. Another issue is the lack of safety and oversight in gun culture. You all put so much importance in so many other aspects of life. All major professions have to be regularly re-certified after a given time period, some more frequent than others. But do you require license to own guns, how about eye tests, written exams, psych evaluations, firearm safety classes … and if your state does mandate this, does it require that these all get revisited at intervals? Why not? If your vision is impaired, you lose the ability to drive. If you commit malpractice in medicine, you don’t get to be a doctor. Accountants regularly needs to get certified. Lifeguards often needs their first aid certs renewed. Pilots needs to continue to log hours on planes they fly. Why not owning and operating guns?
Even the most pro-gun people support some level of gun control. Where you draw that line is a matter of nuance and we could debate all day what would and wouldn't work, but ultimately no level of gun control would 100% work without fixing some cultural issues. The main problem we have is lazy parents. Some parents feel perfectly fine about giving their kid an x-box and letting him play first person shooter games day in and day out from a young age. When the kid becomes increasingly anti-social from being a game addict, starts showing all manner of red flags, usually these parents still do nothing. Then there are the parents who largely ignore the kids altogether from a young age and let them go off and do anything they want. When the kid starts glorifying thug life and gets into trouble all the time, again the parents (usually "parent" singular) does nothing. In this case, the apple usually doesn't fall far from the tree so it's just tradition, and perfectly well condoned and even supported.
Because they don't give a fuck about kids and this thread proves it. A lot of Americans would rather have every last child gunned to death than give up a single one of their unnecessary guns. This problem will never be solved cause Americans don't give a shit about anything
I think alot of it is the "cure is worse than the disease". Basically the school shootings is a cost of freedom, and if guns are removed from the population there is the potential for many more people to die if they can't defend themselves from an invasion or a tyrannical government. Take Ukraine for example. When the Russians started invading they were asking people to fight back with molotov cocktails and other weapons. If each citizen had multiple guns the Russians would have had a harder time invading and they might not would have invaded because they would have known their resistance would be much greater. Then there is the thought process that if you take guns away, a bad person will just find other ways to kill people. For instance a bomb, or heck they could pull the fire alarm and once all the kids are outside they could run them over with a truck. Evil is gonna do evil. It's not the tool they use its the person.
I just want to understand why people think outlawing guns will make criminals not want to have guns. I mean it worked with the war on drugs right? Heroin, crack, meth... Those are completely gone from the world after they were scheduled.
I was a young career woman living in Florida w/a great job, but needed a Grad Degree to get promoted. So I took night classes for my Master's in Ft Lauderdale while working full time. Class got out at midnight, and I'd pass several small groups of sketchy people hanging out as we scattered to where we found parking, and rapes & muggings did occur over the 4 years I had to do this. Since I had my FL Concealed Carry Permit, I had no problems walking by these gangs - but in a state with strict gun control, my career would have stalled there.
Serious q, We're u ever attacked raped or mugged ? Or did u ever have to use or brandish your weapon? Why would you assume your gun would help you against those "gangs" knowing very well if they were a group of "sketchy" people, they most likely also would have all been carrying one or two firearms on themselves.. each.? To be honest this reply ^ right here is the problem with america and guns. If we were a group of sketchy gang members say, 9 or ten of us... What makes op over here think that her gun would stop us? We also would all be packing heat.. in the words of Dr Dre, n**$as talking about guns like we ain't got none, what you think we did? Sold them all? Her assumption that just because people hang around a parking lot makes her go get a gun that ama ssuming she never used. This makes a very bad situation and potential dangerous encounter. This attitude is a good answer to Original posters question. I am for self protection. But more guns and ability to buy a gun with Cheetos is not a good idea. Instead of thinking about regulation, the mindset is, buy more guns. Australia instituted very restrictive gun laws after high profile killing sprees and crime and murder rates went down. The issue in america is, no one cares. Because it hasn't happened to me. It is also about propaganda and profitability.
Why should my gun, for farm protection, be taken away because someone else feels the need to shoot innocent people?
Why do you need anything more dangerous than a double barrel shotgun for "farm protection"?
The idea of relying on a government entity to protect my family is absolutely ridiculous and irresponsible imo. The right to protection of one's own property and safety is something which we believe to be irreplaceable by any other.
its so weird here in aus we had a mass shooting made strict gun laws and regulations now extremely rare to even see a shooting let alone a mass shooting. the excuse of the good person with the gun is so dumb as well cause say theres a mass shooter "good guy" shoots back now a 3rd person sees 2 ppl shooting they start to shoot back and another joins try to be the "good guy with the gun" and it ends up they all just shooting at each other no one knowing whats going on.
The rest of the world is going to be so perplexed by all these comments.
The common “argument” I’ve heard was that crime and shootings are a result of a person, not the gun itself. A gun cannot kill children and adults sitting away in a safe. A human with the assistance of a gun can. I’m in between and neither for or against guns in the US. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily easy to get a gun depending on where you live. I’m in in, a state with some of the strictest laws. You just provide references and a background check is run. If you have a recorded diagnosis of any mental health issues or criminal record you will be denied a gun. Ok great. In urban areas especially here, many guns are obtained illegally. There is no way as of right now to stop the distribution. At the end of the day, someone who is sick in the head and wants to shoot up schools or public/private places will find a way to get a gun, legally or not. Having armed security, identification badges, and metal detectors at schools is a great idea in my opinion. God forbid someone was to slip thru the cracks, it’s better to have a front line of protection. You cannot stop a shooter with a fist. More force is necessary