SonOfCalVa;842608981 said:

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Thoughts and prayers ... Columbine, Sandy Hook, et.al. ... Isn't faith wonderful?
Let's say a prayer for Cal football .. then onward to 12-0.
Or, maybe not.

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Frankly, "we need to do something about gun control" is much more disengenuous than thoughts and prayers.

UrsaMajor;842608642 said:

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There's what SHOULD be done and what CAN be done.

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several of your "suggestions are either already in place or can't work.

Quote:

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1. moving toward only smart guns (if they're stolen, they can't be used by anyone else).

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Only one company has ever made anything approximating a "smart gun." It was tested and I've read a review that was published several years ago. The review condemned the weapon as almost completely non-functional and useless for home or self defense. Most firearms experts who have commented on the idea of a smart gun note that with current technology this is not workable. The attempt to have an electronic disable switch on a gun fails due to the physical force of firing the gun. One of the main points of failure of the one smart gun was that it would mis-fire after only 2-3 shots as the electronics got shook up.

Quote:

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2. universal background checks.

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The only transactions that don't include background checks are private sales. Any business that sells guns has to perform the federally mandated background check, even at gun shows. There has not been a mass shooting in the US in the last 5 years that would have been prevented by any improvement to the current background check law. This is a macguffin at this point.

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3. background checks for purchases of ammunition.

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unworkable. This is the recent shift being proposed by people who have caught on to the fact that background checking weapon sales is already being done. Realize that in states where there is a ban on magazine size whenever a drug den is raided they often find tens of magazines that are clearly stamped "military or police use only". Its far too easy to move ammunition around and the background check won't stop criminals from obtaining whatever ammunition they feel they need.

Quote:

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. banning (nationwide) of fully automatic weapons.

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Unless you were born and live under a rock you know that fully automatic weapons have been banned nationwide since the 1930's.

Quote:

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4. mandatory locking of guns in storage (homes, cars, etc.).

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prevents theft, but how does that stop a mass shooting like what happened yesterday? By all accounts this was a planned attack by well prepared people. All locking of guns does is prevent anyone from quickly grabbing a gun to protect themselves when criminals show up.

Quote:

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What CAN be done: nothing. Except maybe the background check expansion.

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Of your list, none work or are already in place. We need to address the reasons that people go off and try to kill others in job lots. Taking away guns won't stop mass killings. It might prevent some, but it won't stop them.

Remember that France has very strict anti-gun laws and suffered a mass killing just a few weeks ago.

Also Norway is another nation that has all but banned private ownership and the worst mass killing in the last 15 years occurred there. One man who despite the ban on own guns had both guns and explosives.

I'm always amazed that people who should understand that no criminal is going to care about a gun ban will insist that we can stop gun crime by banning guns.

sycasey;842608966 said:

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This is such a hypothetical I'm not sure how to respond.

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It's not too hard to imagine. You've gotten two death threats and at 3am one night someone breaks into your house and you hear them looking around for your bedroom.

By the way, you've reported the death threats but the cops say they can't do anything until the threateners do something.

Rushinbear;842609089 said:

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It's not too hard to imagine. You've gotten two death threats and at 3am one night someone breaks into your house and you hear them looking around for your bedroom.

By the way, you've reported the death threats but the cops say they can't do anything until the threateners do something.

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Why am I getting death threats? Just totally random and out of the blue?

I think we just need to accept that our brand of American exceptionalism means that wackos will always have access to firepower and we will never be safe from terror. Anything else is make believe at this point.

As far as I can tell, the ownership of guns by law abiding citizens has done nothing to prevent these tragedies, certainly not in comparison to the opportunity we have created for mass shootings with the relative ease with which we enable criminals to acquire guns.

I also note that most of these people were law abiding citizens until they shot up a church or whatever, so let's stop pretending that there is a way to enable joe six pack to buy guns but will prevent joe six pack from becoming a terrorist. Heck, the gun that killed Kate Steinle was stolen from a park ranger's car.

Interesting that you cite Norway. Yes, they had a terrible mass killing. THE ONLY ONE IN THE COUNTRY in decades. We have 300+ per year (OK, argue about the precise statistics) more than any other industrialized country by several orders of magnitude. There are in my view two possible explanations: too many guns in the country and too easy access, or Americans are just more psychotic and psychopathic than anyone else in the world (given the popularity of Donald Trump, this may be a valid hypothesis).

sycasey;842609096 said:

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Why am I getting death threats? Just totally random and out of the blue?

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Shhh... I want to hear the paranoid fantasy that drives one to believe that he'd repel armed attackers with his own firearm.

sycasey;842608654 said:

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What should be done:

Repeal the 2nd Amendment.

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Seconded.

Short of that, I heard a workable alternative today on the radio:

Prohibit all semi-auto firearms.

That eliminates the threat of shooters capable of firing virtually non-stop. Two semi-auto firearms and lots of full magazines means you have some major firepower.

Allowing only bolt-actions and six-round revolvers seems like a solution. Leave the high-capacity, semi-auto (and full auto) weapons for the military.

You can still hunt and defend your family.

NYCGOBEARS;842609101 said:

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Shhh... I want to hear the paranoid fantasy that drives one to believe that he'd repel armed attackers with his own firearm.

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Never mind that if there were far fewer guns in America those attackers would be less likely to be armed.

UrsaMajor;842609099 said:

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Interesting that you cite Norway. Yes, they had a terrible mass killing. THE ONLY ONE IN THE COUNTRY in decades. We have 300+ per year (OK, argue about the precise statistics) more than any other industrialized country by several orders of magnitude. There are in my view two possible explanations: too many guns in the country and too easy access, or Americans are just more psychotic and psychopathic than anyone else in the world (given the popularity of Donald Trump, this may be a valid hypothesis).

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Homicide deaths by firearm per million:

USA: 29.x

Switzerland: 7.7
And it goes down from there.

NPR reported today that mental health illness is pretty much the same in the USA compared to other developed countries with far lower firearm homicide rates. So it isn't that we're just far more psycho than others.

NYCGOBEARS;842609101 said:

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Shhh... I want to hear the paranoid fantasy that drives one to believe that he'd repel armed attackers with his own firearm.

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Happens more than you think..if you have tactical defense training, you most likely can though your first move is to yell out "I've got a gun and I've called the police"...Usually robbers don't want to stick around to find out but if they do, just flash a tactical flashlight on "strobe" and they'll be blind...you can then decide whether you want to shoot them. Usually you should unless they are running for the hills....and even if you aren't trained, people get the drop on crooks all the time...hell, I just googled "women shoots robbers" and you get all kinds of stories where in fact, the good guy did repel/kill/shoot/wound some dumbass bad guy. Usually though, it helps to be trained because I can tell you, your heart is beating out of your chest.......By the way, I've always thought we should have very stringent background checks for everyone including gun shows and internet. This isn't for criminals, they buy their stuff illegally, but for the crazy and/or felon type, or terror watch list nut case who shouldn't be within a mile of a firearm.

https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=woman+shoots+robbers

TandemBear;842609112 said:

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Homicide deaths by firearm per million:

USA: 29.x

Switzerland: 7.7
And it goes down from there.

NPR reported today that mental health illness is pretty much the same in the USA compared to other developed countries with far lower firearm homicide rates. So it isn't that we're just far more psycho than others.

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major population and ethnicity differences buddy

norcal_bear;842609195 said:

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major population and ethnicity differences buddy

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Explain how ethnicity makes a difference.

sycasey;842609218 said:

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Explain how ethnicity makes a difference.

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Switzerland is populated by mostly people who are Swiss. One thing that so many people who cite statistics that compare European countries to the US ignore is the fact that compared to the US any European nation has a population that is much less ethnically diverse. It limits one of the largest sources of conflict. It also means that the largest proportion of the population adheres to the same culture. I doubt many people in the US don't know someone who follows a different culture and/or belief system. It generates conflict. And when you consider that most European cultures are far more passive and non-aggressive compared to the historical US culture some of the variance is understandable.

I wish I remembered where I saw it, but someone actually took the time to break down the US statistics for deaths by firearm per million. They looked at race of both killer and victim.

Funny thing, IIRC as soon as you consider race in the statistics the deaths per million for whites dropped to European levels. They also noted that if you divide gang related shooting from other forms of murder you again dropped the deaths down to European levels.

I hate the fact that we do have mass shootings in the US. I don't own a gun and probably never will, but I also believe that there is too much effort put into blaming guns rather than examining who is doing the killing and how we might eliminate the source of the killings.

Remember just because you take guns out doesn't prevent mass killings. Just a few years ago China had a worse mass killing at a school than the one we suffered in Connecticut. The killer just used knives rather than a gun

Guns aren't the real problem. We should stop trying to treat the symptom and actually look to cure the reasons we have the mass killings rather than have another pointless argument about guns.

UrsaMajor;842609099 said:

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Interesting that you cite Norway. Yes, they had a terrible mass killing. THE ONLY ONE IN THE COUNTRY in decades. We have 300+ per year (OK, argue about the precise statistics) more than any other industrialized country by several orders of magnitude. There are in my view two possible explanations: too many guns in the country and too easy access, or Americans are just more psychotic and psychopathic than anyone else in the world (given the popularity of Donald Trump, this may be a valid hypothesis).

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Remove the gang and drug related shootings and the US isn't that far away from any European nation when it comes to murder statistics. When you factor in population density, poverty, drug use, gang violence, criminal activity into the statistics the US is not really all that dangerous. It doesn't help that when there is a mass killing we get 100+ hours of "OMG it happened again!" reporting, which not only tends to obscure any attempt to ask why it happened, but it also encourages the next madman to go out and attempt a mass killing.

One interesting fact on your average mass killer. If they are captured alive they almost always mug for the cameras and actually bask in the attention from the press. They are angry and lonely individuals who see some level of validation from the press coverage they have generated. However, most will suicide rather than be taken alive. they want the press coverage, but are cowards at heart. That's why in the last 15 years more than 90% of all mass shootings in the US occurred at a posted "gun-free zone". These mass killers are looking for a feeling of power by shooting at defenseless civilians. Someone shooting at them is not what they are looking for and many shoot themselves at the first sign of police response.

The solution is complex. Just removing guns isn't possible and won't prevent the crazies from coming up with new ways. Heck remember that the guys who hit the Boston Marathon just used pressure cookers and deliberately overloaded them turning them into bombs. Guns weren't necessary for them to slaughter people.

sycasey;842609218 said:

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Explain how ethnicity makes a difference.

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Lets not get all PC and ignore reality. The real places where gun deaths occur the most are cities like Chicago and Baltimore. These places have long been governed by Dems and tend to have the strictest gun control laws in the nation. But check out who is being killed there.

mvargus;842609544 said:

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Guns aren't the real problem. We should stop trying to treat the symptom and actually look to cure the reasons we have the mass killings rather than have another pointless argument about guns.

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So the answer is to . . . make America less diverse?

sycasey;842609603 said:

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So the answer is to . . . make America less diverse?

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I'm up for a good race war.

Rushinbear;842609089 said:

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By the way, you've reported the death threats but the cops say they can't do anything until the threateners do something.

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Very sadly and very seriously, I've been in this spot. Yeah free speech and all that. Except about 8 years later and I still look carefully every time I exit the parking garage elevator alone. It is scary and sucks.

sycasey;842609096 said:

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Why am I getting death threats? Just totally random and out of the blue?

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Because someone else is mentally unstable and dangerous.

tequila4kapp;842609609 said:

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Very sadly and very seriously, I've been in this spot. Yeah free speech and all that. Except about 8 years later and I still look carefully every time I exit the parking garage elevator alone. It is scary and sucks.
Because someone else is mentally unstable and dangerous.

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Did you feel like carrying a gun would have helped you feel safer?

sycasey;842609610 said:

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Did you feel like carrying a gun would have helped you feel safer?

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Interestingly enough, my father was in this position several years ago. He told me that he was actually glad that he'd gotten rid of the shotgun he had previously owned, because he was certain that he would have pre-emptively used it on the guy (who was known to be armed) who had been threatening him. The stress of the situation had become so great that he just wanted it to be over, one way or another.

BearsWiin;842609607 said:

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I'm up for a good race war.

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It's been ongoing for a while -- you're welcome to join in!

sycasey;842609610 said:

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Did you feel like carrying a gun would have helped you feel safer?

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I had previously been involved in tactical shooting sports so my situation was unique - I did feel like I could protect myself. So yes. But that isn't an easy question anymore. If attacked at home I've now got kids and the layout of my home is such that there are only a few safe line of site shots. My employer explicitly prohibits firearms from being on site, so protecting myself there means risking my employment. Put it together and about 20 of my 24 hours each day are now untenable self protection environments.

Chick San Bernardino shooter pledged loyalty to ISIS on Facebook. You can't make this s$it up.

Well said mvargus - the only thing I have to add is that even private party sales in CA must pass background checks unless the buyer is a federal license holder.

And if you are going to ask why the gun owners aren't preventing more "mass shootings", most people aren't carrying outside their home. And in CA even those who want to carry outside their home are generally denied the CCW permit required if they live in most urban/suburban counties. San Berdoo seems like they issue to those who want to get them though.

mvargus;842608994 said:

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several of your "suggestions are either already in place or can't work.



Only one company has ever made anything approximating a "smart gun." It was tested and I've read a review that was published several years ago. The review condemned the weapon as almost completely non-functional and useless for home or self defense. Most firearms experts who have commented on the idea of a smart gun note that with current technology this is not workable. The attempt to have an electronic disable switch on a gun fails due to the physical force of firing the gun. One of the main points of failure of the one smart gun was that it would mis-fire after only 2-3 shots as the electronics got shook up.



The only transactions that don't include background checks are private sales. Any business that sells guns has to perform the federally mandated background check, even at gun shows. There has not been a mass shooting in the US in the last 5 years that would have been prevented by any improvement to the current background check law. This is a macguffin at this point.



unworkable. This is the recent shift being proposed by people who have caught on to the fact that background checking weapon sales is already being done. Realize that in states where there is a ban on magazine size whenever a drug den is raided they often find tens of magazines that are clearly stamped "military or police use only". Its far too easy to move ammunition around and the background check won't stop criminals from obtaining whatever ammunition they feel they need.



Unless you were born and live under a rock you know that fully automatic weapons have been banned nationwide since the 1930's.



prevents theft, but how does that stop a mass shooting like what happened yesterday? By all accounts this was a planned attack by well prepared people. All locking of guns does is prevent anyone from quickly grabbing a gun to protect themselves when criminals show up.



Of your list, none work or are already in place. We need to address the reasons that people go off and try to kill others in job lots. Taking away guns won't stop mass killings. It might prevent some, but it won't stop them.

Remember that France has very strict anti-gun laws and suffered a mass killing just a few weeks ago.

Also Norway is another nation that has all but banned private ownership and the worst mass killing in the last 15 years occurred there. One man who despite the ban on own guns had both guns and explosives.

I'm always amazed that people who should understand that no criminal is going to care about a gun ban will insist that we can stop gun crime by banning guns.

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sycasey;842609603 said:

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So the answer is to . . . make America less diverse?

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I never suggested that, nor would I. What I said was that the situation is far too complex to simply blame guns. Interestingly there was an article on the National Review website that addressed this. Link

The author explicitly challenges the conventional wisdom that guns are to blame and even notes:

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In fact, the United States’ overall high rate of homicide is largely explained, perhaps entirely explained, by problems unrelated to gun ownership.

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Perhaps the biggest takeaway is the next paragraph where he notes.

Quote:

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There is actually no simple correlation between states’ homicide rates and their gun-ownership rates or gun laws. This has been shown numerous times, by different people, using different data sets. A year ago, I took state gun-ownership levels reported by the Washington Post (based on a Centers for Disease Control survey) and compared them with murder rates from the FBI: no correlation. The legal scholar Eugene Volokh has compared states’ gun laws (as rated by the anti-gun Brady Campaign) with their murder rates: no correlation. David Freddoso of the Washington Examiner, a former National Review reporter, failed to find a correlation even between gun ownership in a state and gun murders specifically, an approach that sets aside the issue of whether gun availability has an effect on non-gun crime. (Guns can deter unarmed criminals, for instance, and criminals without guns may simply switch to other weapons.)

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/427967/san-bernardino-shooting-guns-homicide-statistics

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The article includes a graph that very clearly shows that there is no relationship between percentage of households with guns in a state and the number of people murdered as a percentage of the population. The author goes deeper into asking why than I have here and notes that there are cultural issues that will likely never be completely fixed.

Humans are not sheep or ants or cows. We are a naturally rowdy species that forms very limited bonds with a small "clan" that we call friends and often sees anyone outside our own clan as the enemy. I know that there are people who keep claiming that human society has or should "progress" beyond this point, but it hasn't happened yet, and until you remove a lot of natural instinct and hormonal factors I don't think it ever will. The killings are deplorable and should be condemned when they happen, but at the same time we need to ask "why." In this latest episode is looks like the decisions were not based on something you or I can relate to. Syed and his wife for reasons we might never completely understand choose to go to Syed's place of work and shoot up the place. I do think that there is some influence from ISIS and the imperial form of Jihad that is currently popular among some Muslims. If any blame needs to be placed that would be the best place to start looking.

wifeisafurd;842608266 said:

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Who said this is just an American problem?

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You're kidding, right?

School shooting deaths alone....
TOP 3.....
USA = 198
Germany (includes, west, east and Reich) =48
UK= 17

COUNTRIES OF THE AMERICAS.....
Canada= 16
Brazil = 12
Guatemala = 2

TOTAL BY CONTINENT......
North America = 224
South/Central America = 14
Europe=93
Asia = 103
Africa = 0
Australia = 0
Antartica =0

USA= 198
The rest of the world = 226

World Population = 7.3 Billion
Population of USA = 326 Million

YES.... It's an American problem

mvargus;842609909 said:

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I never suggested that, nor would I. What I said was that the situation is far too complex to simply blame guns. Interestingly there was an article on the National Review website that addressed this. Link

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Take a shot at it. What do you think could be done to help mitigate a problem that is clearly more pronounced in America than anywhere else?

Some people believe a large part of it is because those other countries have stricter gun laws. You do not. So is it an unsolvable problem or is there something else we could try?

there are no terrorists in the US.

sycasey;842609927 said:

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Take a shot at it. What do you think could be done to help mitigate a problem that is clearly more pronounced in America than anywhere else?

Some people believe a large part of it is because those other countries have stricter gun laws. You do not. So is it an unsolvable problem or is there something else we could try?

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I wouldn't say its unsolvable, but the problems are clearly cultural and environmental as much as a problem with the availability of guns. Remember that France all but bans guns and has had 3 mass shootings just this year and the death count there is higher than the US has suffered from "mass public shootings" (removing family murder/suicide and gang fighting deaths.)

I'd ask you what you are trying to accomplish? Removing guns does not eliminate murders or crime. The UK bans guns and had 2 problems after they disarmed the law abiding part of the population. First criminals outside the major cities knew that most homes were undefended and home invasions spiked. The criminals still had weapons and for a while it was being reported that police forces outside London were having to armor up to protect themselves when dealing with the home invasions. Second, in the urban areas knifings have increased dramatically. Removing the guns just changed the weapon. Yes, you don't get as man innocent bystanders hurt, but its gotten bad enough that there actually have been marches by people demanding a ban on carrying of knives.

I can't remember which article I saw it in, but one looked at a gun murder per 100,000 population by state and noticed that you can actually spot trends based on the area of the US. The New England states have a lower rate while the south tends to have a higher rate no matter what the gun laws are. Its a cultural issue. People who are brought up in certain cultures are more willing to use violence to answer disrespect or other issues. Its not much different than why the Middle East is so violent. The culture there is one that demands a violent reaction to disrespect. Are you going to somehow remove that cultural bias? I'd love to understand how you could do that. Remember that insulting the culture is only going to encourage a violent reaction as you are disrespecting it.

And then what about the gang issue. Most mass shootings in the US are gang related and are clustered in the inner cities. That is over drug sales territory, prostitution income and protection rackets. Its the same problems we now almost glorify in the movies about the old Al Capone type gangsters. However, there is a real tragedy going on that drives this. Back then the mafia was largely run by men who at least had some pretension that they were honorable gentleman businessmen. Today's gang leader is more often someone who sees himself much less as a public figure who needs to be respected. The false civility that drove the gangsters of yore is gone and now we get more driveby shootings and random acts of violence. Honestly, this part of the culture has degraded, but I'm not someone who can suggest how to fix it. I'd say ending the war on drugs and taking away the biggest income source for the gangs might help, but most would just pretend to go legit and make even more money.

I don't have a real answer. Education helps. Getting people out of the pit of despair that poverty puts them in can help (but only if it makes them feel productive, welfare doesn't end the despair, just makes the misery a bit more comfortable.). Finding a way to end cultural friction would definitely help. (but not by constantly insulting Western Culture, Christianity, Gun-ownership or any other aspect of the culture like liberals love to do, that increases the friction.). Finding a way to end the racial friction that has grown much worse in the last few years, again without insulting white males by putting all the blame on them, which is what we see too much of and which has probably made the situation much worse than it was is necessary.

In all seriousness, a lot of this is a case where the patient needs to heal themselves and in many cases the patient doesn't want to because they feel that making moves to solve the problem will only increase their misery. Heck, I've lived a situation like this in a micro scale. I live with a friend who demands that I effectively surrender to them any time we have a conflict. Their idea of compromise is "fine do it my way and we'll all be happy." I've reached the point where I refuse to listen to them because I know that no compromise I would find acceptable will be offered. There are growing segments of the population of the US that feel this way. The rise of Trump is entirely based on this phenomenon. People who are tried of being told that the game is "heads I win, tails you lose." are fighting back in the only ways deemed remotely acceptable.

Why would Congress prohibit the CDC from studying gun violence as a public health issue?

If you really want to find solutions, you don't hog tie the government preventing study and proposing solutions.

Gun control is over.

calbear93;842608652 said:

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I hate that our president makes these types of tone-deaf statements in light of tragedies in Paris and other parts of Europe and Africa. While I have never and will never own a gun and I am baffled by pull the NRA has in getting corrupt politicians to agree to ridiculous positions like not prohibiting guns to those on no-fly-list, I am also confused by why he is using this as an opportunity to lecture us on gun control issue. ....

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I've come to hate the sound of Obama's voice. His DOJ can prosecute FIFA soccer officials in Switzerland but won't touch WS bankers or international tax cheats.

93gobears;842610409 said:

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I've come to hate the sound of Obama's voice. His DOJ can prosecute FIFA soccer officials in Switzerland but won't touch WS bankers or international tax cheats.

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+1,000,000,000,000

....or Muslim Terrorists and Jihadists. The man lives in an alternate universe from reality.

NVBear78;842610507 said:

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+1,000,000,000,000

....or Muslim Terrorists and Jihadists. The man lives in an alternate universe from reality.

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How about Christian terrorists?