How? Never reported to the police. Never entered in a database. Probably couldn’t be, thanks to HIPAA regulations for personal privacy.
Do you expect every gun owner to pay for a private detective to go spy on every potential purchaser, then sell or not sell based on personal preference?
Or do you expect them to check the NCIS database, and so forth, as required by law, and see if there are any legal restrictions on a person purchasing a firearm, and if not, sell it to them?
Seriously, do you expect the private detective thing? It’d require a load and a half of ‘pretexting’ for anyone to find out about a college mental health issue, because private detectives aren’t legally going to find out about information like that.
You ask the question as if the answer were not obvious. So I’ll make it even more obvious: yes. Personal references are hardly unheard of as a requirement for any number of privileges and opportunities. If the best someone can come up with is the near-universal testimony that most everyone who knows him are scared to death of him already, maybe arming the guy shouldn’t be society’s first priority. If someone wants a gun, or a couple, and fifty rounds of ammo while you’re at it, frankly, the least I’d like for reassurance is that there’s somebody on the planet who knows this guy who’s not thinking s/he’ll be a victim.
Why do people keep saying things like this? It is a gun. It shoots bullets. Bullets shot into people kill them. How hard is this to comprehend. Do people actually think that a small gun isn’t as dangerous somehow? Please tell me people aren’t that stupid.
More deer are poached with .22 cal weapons every year than any other caliber. A .22 was the weapon Sirhan Sirhan used to assassinate Robert Kennedy. A .22 is a deadly weapon.
Yes, they are, Quiddity. People who don’t know guns, don’t understand things. They get confused by movies and television.
Now, of course, who pays for the extensive psychological testing? You, Larry, or the gun owner? It’ll be expensive, as there is no ‘stick your head here’ machine. And I’m willing to bet it’ll be found unconstitutional, like a poll tax, as an unreasonable restriction. People have tried to put 5000% taxes on bullets, you know. Doesn’t work.
This is the part I want to Pit. Not for the actual sentiment but because he and Congress didn’t bother to take this attitude before passing the PATRIOT Act!
Fifty rounds, by the way, is about half an hour’s shooting, with four other people shooting in turn, for me. Hundred rounds is $17 at Wal-Mart, in a big box, bout the size of half a shoebox.
The spepch was stupid, same as any speech he has ever given. Imagine what a great, inspired speech would have given if he were still President.
And they were in the right palce at the wrong time, is what doofus meant. But that statement in this context is just such a bizarre non-sequitur in the first place. Who comments on something like that at a speech like that? I bet he came up with that gem himself.
“Did not deserve their fate”? Is there anyone listening to that tripe that thought they did? Jesus, a four year old would know that. Has anyone anywhere hinted that they did? Even Pat Robertson wouldn’t say that.
Let’s say I want to buy a gun. You send a private detective to investigate me and he runs into my ex-girlfriend. She talks about what a horrible, evil person I am because she’s still bitter that I broke up with her for being a fucking wingnut. Would that be enough to prevent me from legally buying a firearm?
You know, we have a lot more guns than crazy people in this country. And crazy people have murdered far more people than guns ever will.
I have eight guns in my gun safe. I can vouch that seven of them never killed anyone. The other one is a trapdoor Springfield that was converted from a Union Army rifle, and we can’t know anything about it either way. Let’s just say that it hasn’t killed anyone in over a century and won’t ever again.
These guns aren’t bothering anyone, and we really shouldn’t worry about them in this context.
The point is, maybe we ought to keep an eye on the nutcases rather than the guns. It might be a better use of resources, especially since this particular shooter seemed to be very troubled, most people who knew him thought he might become violent, yet nothing was ever done about it.
I do think there is a general perception about smaller caliber weapons being less dangerous. Imagine Dirty Harry’s “it shoots through schools” bit with him holding a .22.
However, I do not regard a .22 as not dangerous. I assume that you weren’t implying anything about me in your little pointless rant. Please let me know if you intended otherwise, and I’ll be happy to let you know again what I think of you.
I do think it is very worth pointing out that assault weapons ban or no, the largest single mass shooting in the country was carried out by one guy with two fairly vanilla, legally purchased handguns.
I think that is indeed a moderate stance and I applaud you for having your guns in a safe place. In this case there were concerns about Cho, but there was no mechanism to prevent him from legally buying a gun until after he commited a serious crime. I’m not sure what the answer is, but I think something along the lines of how we treat automobiles and driver’s licences is the way to go.
I think we need to worry about the intersection of nutcases and guns. I would also point out that it isn’t only “nutcases” that kill people with guns - at least, depending on how you want to define “nutcases,” up to the point at which they killed someone with a gun.
This argument that guns in and of themselves are not dangerous is an argument put forth by idiots for consumption by idiots. Of course they are not dangerous in and of themselves. The question is whether or not they are a tool that is sufficiently safe to be used regularly by the general public.
To put it another way, obviously people are the limiting factor in the equation. What limits, therefore, do we put on people in order to maximize safety?
Certainly. I think you also have to worry about felons and other criminals. That’s why I have long been an advocate for felon and nutcase control, part of which includes not letting them have guns.
But seriously, leaving aside the trapdoor, as I said, my guns have killed fewer people than Ted Kennedy’s cars. Leave them be.
Of course! You’re absolutely right. :smack: Somehow I had put both those scenes together.
Okay, so imagine the scenes thusly: “Being as this is a [.22], the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question…”
and
“They made it for him special. It’s a [.22]. It shoots through schools.”
So, how do we ban guns totally, absolutely, and completely from this country if people are not to be trusted with them? First we have to repeal the 2nd Amendment. Then, in order to enforce the repeal, we have to also repeal the 4th Amendment to make sure that we get them all. We might also have to repeal the 6th and the 14th Amendments to handle the prosecution of the millions of criminals that we have now created. We also have to build enough prisons to handle a significant portion of our population.
Then we might have to vastly increase the size of our military to cover the borders to prevent the illegal importation of weapons from elsewhere, and rescind the Posse Comitatus law so they can act in a law enforcement capacity. Maybe then we can get all the guns.
It is, of course, a bit of hyperbole. I hate hyperbole in gun discussions because they divert attention from the reasonable discussion and take it to absurdity, but seriously, what mechanism do we have, what mechanism can we have, for the total proscription of gun ownership in this country without stepping on other rights in the process?
The bottom line is that we simply have to trust that people will do the right and responsible thing more often than not.