The American Constitution

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... and a larger number of innocent bystanders as well.

That would happen anyway.

[Alan Klein]

...
That leaves only the hardware, and the govt. could start by finding its testicles - assuming they have not atrophied beyond repair - and instantly ban the production of all small arms that a person might care to carry concealed in his waistband. It could restrict the sales of so-called sporting rifles to farmers and authorised rangers and ensure that anyone found owning a military weapon goes down for a considerable period. Sport shooting, as in the killing for "fun" of animals by a civilian with a blood lust and ineffectual penis is a horrible comment on the state of mind and being of such a person. Of such a vast group of them, in fact.

The arms business makes enough money selling to political and radical factions across the globe. Without its benign interference the weapons in those benighted territories would be no better than copies of copies of old Russian guns hand-made in Afghanistan.

While I don;t hunt, there are many who do.  Leaving aside the "moral" discussion, hunting is required to keep population of animals in check.  Natural predation doesn;t exist anymore for many natural prey animals like deer, elk, etc.  In my human congested state of NJ, there are dead deer all over the roads hit by vehicles.  Nationwide, hundreds of people are killed in these accidents.  You can;t imagine the devastation hitting a 100 pound deer can do to a car.   Often you lose control and wind up hitting another car or a tree.  I drive with my high beams on most of the time at night so I can see the deer's eyes as they stand right off the road.  That way I can hopefully avoid them before they enter the road.   (Yes I shut them off when oncoming traffic approaches).

Also, sport shooting is a huge hobby in  the US which is even in the Olympics and other world competitions.  Many of these people don't hunt at all.  Gun companies are required to provide guns and ammunition to these people as well.  The constitution does not allow the shutdown of gun manufacturers because of the 2nd Amendment and other constitutional freedoms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_sports

[Alan Klein]

Yes and no. Those lunatics go there do die. By cop or bystanders, it is all the same to them. But, he might end up dead sooner.

Even lunatics aren't stupid.  They would just avoid the carry locations and go to a no carry location instead.

[faberryman]

Also, sport shooting is a huge hobby in  the US which is even in the Olympics and other world competitions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_sports

Last time I checked, shooting AK47s is not an Olympic sport. Who hunts deer with an AK47? A single shot manual load rifle works fine.

[Rob C]

Like what?

I am not trying to be facetious. I am genuinely interested. Most of those guys would have passed, or did, background checks. They are typically described as loners, a bit withdrawn or weird, but far from certifiably mental.

And you're right: such tests are minimal and possibly designed to allow the maximum number of people to continue being consumers. It's all part of the grand scheme to allow everything to get a green light, regardless of how dangerous to other people just as long as it turns a buck and can be passed off as a freedom.

I even get unsolicited - and unwelcome - e-mails from folks looking forward to laying hands on their new, deadly toy. All the fun of the forum, one might say.

As for the recent shooters: most seem to have clear, Internet footprints where they advertise their emotional state of imbalance; are the preventative algorithms beyond the owners of these platforms? I'd be really surprised if that were the case, that alarm bells cannot be made to ring where they may be acted upon in time.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

That would happen anyway.

Without well-practiced people shooting at random at others who are swinging guns? Really?

Come to think of it, what if everybody shoots everybody else who is swinging a gun? There might be some merit in it ... 

Cheers,
Bart

[Alan Klein]

You can ban assault rifles. We have done it before. Machine guns have been banned for a hundred years. We ban rocket launchers after all. Maybe some background checks without loopholes.  NRA can still advocate for guns. So what. People advocate for all sorts of stuff we don't permit. We can still take reasonable steps .

So called "assault rifles" are not machine guns.  They're single action weapons like "regular" rifles.  You have to pull the trigger for each shot.  They do carry more rounds in the magazine.  But many states have already limited the number of rounds.  Frankly, it wouldn't make much difference if you got rid of them entirely.  Nut jobs would still use rifles and handguns to slaughter people. 

WIthout sounding political, it really is the people not the guns.  When I was a kid, there weren't these kind of shootings and there were plenty of guns then too.  The first case I remember was the University of Texas Tower shooting in 1966.  Stuff like that never really happened before and that was a seminal case. The perpetrator who was killed himself at the scene after killing about 17 people, was found to have a tumor in his brain.  He used only single shot weapons. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting

[kers]

Just ban all arms. Only Police may carry arms.
Choose a less racist president- where is his reaction?
One that unites people

[Robert Roaldi]

WIthout sounding political, it really is the people not the guns.  When I was a kid, there weren't these kind of shootings and there were plenty of guns then too.  The first case I remember was the University of Texas Tower shooting in 1966.  Stuff like that never really happened before and that was a seminal case. The perpetrator who was killed himself at the scene after killing about 17 people, was found to have a tumor in his brain.  He used only single shot weapons. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Texas_tower_shooting

Maybe that was a time when guns were tools. Now increasingly they are a fetish.

Can you answer one thing that I'm very curious about. Why is it that when the topic of automatic fire weapons or semi-automatic ones, there is always someone who pipes with detailed descriptions of what makes one different from another, and so on. Who cares. We all know and understand these things by now, or most of us. The real question is why these weapons are seen as ok for members of the public to own and potentially use.

No one needs an AR15 to "defend their family". What are they going to do, carry one or an AK47 around 24/7 jic some nutcase decides to open fire? Where but in a Hollywood movie would this ever have a happy ending?

[degrub]

Then when you get a “strongman” or fascist government - what to do ? Wait for the army to revolt or leave ?
No thanks.

[Alan Klein]

Putting free speech and gun ownership in bed together is a lunacy. If your FFs really intended that, they must have been moonshine distillers on the side.

Not in any man's language can guns and speech be conflated in this manner and make sense.

Anyone pretending otherwise is making a mockery of his own country and its laws.

You forget that America was birthed by free men who used their private weapons to rid themselves of your king and British control.  How much longer did it take the Indians and Arabs do to the same?  What about others in your empire? 

When American patriots wrote our Constitution, they wanted to assure that no future government would take away free men's rights to own and use private weapons against any potential future king or tyrant.   While I can understand you misunderstanding of our culture, and history, what bothers me is how many Americans today have not learned the importance of our 2nd Amendment and the right to bear arms in ensuring our future freedoms.

[faberryman]

So called "assault rifles" are not machine guns.  They're single action weapons like "regular" rifles.  You have to pull the trigger for each shot.

Assault rifles are the weapon of choice in these mass shootings. Make them reload every time they want to kill someone, not just pull the trigger.

[elliot_n]

These shooters are not 'crazies', 'lunatics', 'nut jobs' etc. They are highly-motivated, white supremacist terrorists. Ban guns by all means, but ultimately you need to tackle their ideology and the way it is propagated on websites such as 4chan.

[Rob C]

While I don;t hunt, there are many who do.  Leaving aside the "moral" discussion, hunting is required to keep population of animals in check.  Natural predation doesn;t exist anymore for many natural prey animals like deer, elk, etc.  In my human congested state of NJ, there are dead deer all over the roads hit by vehicles.  Nationwide, hundreds of people are killed in these accidents.  You can;t imagine the devastation hitting a 100 pound deer can do to a car.   Often you lose control and wind up hitting another car or a tree.  I drive with my high beams on most of the time at night so I can see the deer's eyes as they stand right off the road.  That way I can hopefully avoid them before they enter the road.   (Yes I shut them off when oncoming traffic approaches).

Also, sport shooting is a huge hobby in  the US which is even in the Olympics and other world competitions.  Many of these people don't hunt at all.  Gun companies are required to provide guns and ammunition to these people as well.  The constitution does not allow the shutdown of gun manufacturers because of the 2nd Amendment and other constitutional freedoms.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_sports

There's the Achilles heel to many of your stances: as a responsible human being, you simply can't forget the moral standpoint: it's what makes us, sometimes, better than the hyena.

Wild animal numbers can be managed perfectly well, as I already indicated, by rangers who know what they do and why they have to do it. Because many people see killing as a hobby or sport, or just a naked pleasure is neither here nor there. Sod 'em. There are also plenty of people around who would love to be let loose to run through a junior school armed with a machine gun, baseball bat or a set of Japanese kitchen knives. There are thousands of little groups of guys out there who would love to kidnap your pretty, twenty-year-old daughter and gang-bang her; there are as many ugly emotions around as there are people. Why not argue that they, too, have rights to freedom to do what the hell they like under your inviolable constitution? After all, gang-banging a girl can't be as bad as shooting a couple of people dead, can it? Right? Maybe you get the point.

Because one branch of such people has already won the legal right to mayhem due to laws drawn up in a time when no such deadly modern weapons existed, does not mean that common sense should not prevail. Standing on the basis of an out-of-date law as if it was handed down by God himself instead of by a bunch of guys as humanly frail and short-sighted as the rest of us is no honour, nor sign of respect: it's just plain stupid.

[Alan Klein]

Last time I checked, shooting AK47s is not an Olympic sport. Who hunts deer with an AK47? A single shot manual load rifle works fine.

You're conflating hunting with the right to bear arms, a favorite tactic of those opposed to that right.  Many people own arms but don't hunt. Yet, they want a weapon to protect their homes and person and for future protection of the country if need be. 

[faberryman]

You're conflating hunting with the right to bear arms, a favorite tactic of those opposed to that right.  Many people own arms but don't hunt. Yet, they want a weapon to protect their homes and person and for future protection of the country if need be.

Your the one who brought up hunting. I just pointed out what a ridiculous rationalization it was. You don't need automatic weapons to hunt.

[Alan Klein]

Assault rifles are the weapon of choice in these mass shootings. Make them reload every time they want to kill someone, not just pull the trigger.

That restriction would probably be unconstitutional. Otherwise you could outlaw everything except a muzzleloading musket like was used in our Revolutionary War of 1776.  In any case, 95%+ of killings are not mass killings.  They are just murders done with "ordinary" guns especially hand guns.   

[Alan Klein]

There's the Achilles heel to many of your stances: as a responsible human being, you simply can't forget the moral standpoint: it's what makes us, sometimes, better than the hyena.

Wild animal numbers can be managed perfectly well, as I already indicated, by rangers who know what they do and why they have to do it. Because many people see killing as a hobby or sport, or just a naked pleasure is neither here nor there. Sod 'em. There are also plenty of people around who would love to be let loose to run through a junior school armed with a machine gun, baseball bat or a set of Japanese kitchen knives. There are thousands of little groups of guys out there who would love to kidnap your pretty, twenty-year-old daughter and gang-bang her; there are as many ugly emotions around as there are people. Why not argue that they, too, have rights to freedom to do what the hell they like under your inviolable constitution? After all, gang-banging a girl can't be as bad as shooting a couple of people dead, can it? Right? Maybe you get the point.

Because one branch of such people has already won the legal right to mayhem due to laws drawn up in a time when no such deadly modern weapons existed, does not mean that common sense should not prevail. Standing on the basis of an out-of-date law as if it was handed down by God himself instead of by a bunch of guys as humanly frail and short-sighted as the rest of us is no honour, nor sign of respect: it's just plain stupid.

Hunting laws have nothing to do with the US Constitutional right to bear arms.  You don't have to have a right to hunt to bear arms.  Hunting rules and regulations are separately made by each of the 50 states for their state only.  There is no constitutional right to hunt. While you may see it as a moral issue, every state of the 50 states allows hunting in their state.  Even the most liberal , blue democrat state like my former state of New York.  Interestingly, the NY State  Department of Environmental Protection controls hunting and the killing of animals.

"Hunting is among the most popular forms of wildlife recreation in New York State. Nearly 700,000 New Yorkers and over 50,000 nonresidents hunt in the Empire State. New York offers many exciting opportunities to hunt a large variety of wildlife, including big game, small game, game birds and furbearers."
https://www.dec.ny.gov/outdoor/hunting.html

[faberryman]

In any case, 95%+ of killings are not mass killings.

We could start by doing something about the ~5% that are mass killings. There is no reason to allow military style assault rifles.

[Alan Klein]

Your the one who brought up hunting. I just pointed out what a ridiculous rationalization it was. You don't need automatic weapons to hunt.

I never said you do.