You are welcome to him.
Maybe the first step is simply go back to where we were circa 1990. If one is found to be stockpiling guns, the BATFE shows up and confiscates them. If they resist, burn down their houses with their families inside.
Are you really better off letting whackjobs hoard weapons? We’ve tried it that way. Seems like we were a little safer under the regime that killed off the Branch Koreshian.
People will say this is inhumane. But arguably it’s better to have mass murder carried out by government agents following defined rules, whose wrath can be avoided, than to have it be a sporadic eruption from a sea of chaos, as now.
And yes, there were mass shootings before then: a couple disgruntled postal workers, and a lass who found Mondays boring. Would those make more than local news now?
We were? What was the homicide rate under that regime? What was the violent crime rate? What is it now?
“Violent crime” is not a clear category. Is shoving a violent crime? Is rape by coercion? Is yelling in someone’s face? Who defines the standards?
“Homicide” is a clear category, but the gun rights crowd don’t like to count it as a crime, because they want to pretend that over half of gun deaths were actually "crime prevention." :rolleyes:
I think focusing on what could or couldn’t prevent this particular mass shooting, or whether gun violence is up or down, is missing the more important point.
A lot more people per capita are killed by guns here than in other first world countries. I think this is a problem, and one we ought to do something about (even knowing we probably can’t eliminate all gun violence).
To the gun rights folks: Do you agree that this is a problem worth addressing? If so, what do you think we should do about it?
The murder rate was almost twice as high in 1990 as it is today. And the feds didn’t bust into the Branch Davidian compound because they were “stockpiling guns”. It did so because of allegations of child abuse, and that they were either purchasing illegal firearms or modifying legal firearms in ways that were illegal at the time.
nm
Dunno if this has already been covered, but in the wake of Newtown, Dianne Feinstein’s proposed amendment (to the gun control bill that wound up getting voted down anyway) would have banned bump stocks and trigger cranks, along with a good deal of the Vegas shooter’s arsenal.
Her amendment lost on a 40-60 vote.
So yes, gun control would have done something about Vegas. The shooter couldn’t have fired bullets at machine-gun rates; he would have been limited to the rate at which he could pull the trigger with his finger.
He still could have killed and wounded people, but not nearly as many.
This seems to be the main thread discussing the Las Vegas shooting, so I hope I will be forgiven a brief hijack:
Some alt-rightists, led by key Trump mentor Alex Jones, are pushing the #FakeFact that Stephen Paddock was a supporter of Antifa. :smack:
An Antifa supporter who is (was) heavily invested in real estate. That would probably be a first!
Feinstein thought it was called a “slide iron stock”.
Well, it’s not a nitpick - gun control would have done something about Vegas if bump stocks and trigger cranks had been made illegal, and if the shooter had either decided to abide by the law, or if it were impossible for him to obtain such a device illegally, and impossible for him to make such a device on his own.
And those are pretty big if’s.
Regards,
Shodan
Yeah, it’s been covered. 
I’ll just say I disagree, but the majority of posters in this thread by a large margin agree with your assessment, so I’ll leave it at that.
True about any gun or gun accessory, needless to say.
So what’s the point of bringing this up? I read your point as being, there’s no gun control measure that can’t be defeated by someone who wants to get hold of an illegal gun or device, so why bother?
Nuts to that. Let’s try some shit that looks like it should help, and see if it actually does. “Can do” is much more of an American attitude than “can’t do.” I’m not exactly Mr. Patriotic American, but I’m at least at “fuck it, let’s at least try.”
The rub seems to be agreeing on what “looks like it should help”.
No, the rub is the gun nutters opposing any and all possible measures that might help because FUCK YOU DON’T TAKE MY GUNS.
They’ve already shown us that they’re quite satisfied living with roughly 100 deaths a day as long as they can have their toys.
It seems particularly true on the subject of bump stocks.
I asked my son about the topic over the weekend. He knows guns well, owns several, and was trained in their use while in the military. From what he said, bump stocks are relatively easy to create, and it is even easier to create the same effect by hooking your thumb in a belt loop. He has done this, and he showed me how it works (with a paintball gun).
What is the purpose, and what would be the effect, of a law saying “bump stocks are illegal, and it is also illegal to hook your thumb in your belt loop when firing a semi-automatic rifle”?
Passing pointless laws does not seem to me to be much better than passing no law.
Regards,
Shodan
The converse is the anti-gun nuts wanting to take them all away by any means possible, including making scary sounding claims such as your’s. 100 deaths a day SEEMS like a lot, especially when there is no context. Is that 100 gun murders a day? No, not exactly. The large majority are suicides. And, of course, we happily accept more than that when it comes to either alcohol or tobacco, just so that folks who want those things can ‘have their toys’ as well.
Like I said, there is a middle position between the extremes, the problem is the folks on those extremes are almost religiously fervent about their position. You can’t be talked down or reasoned with, neither can the gun nuts. So, instead, we just keep spinning our collective wheels and nothing really changes. How could it, after all, when compromise isn’t possible? The rabidly anti-gun side won’t (perhaps can’t) accept a permanent solution that involves gun in society, and the rabidly gun side is paranoid in their distrust of the anti-gun side AND won’t (and perhaps can’t) accept a permanent solution that involves any regulations the THINK might be used against them in the future. Impasse, when those sides are the ones really in control of the dialogue since they are the most vocal and most fired up (thus, most likely to vote strongly on this issue).
If we look at the rest of the industrialized world, it IS a lot, regardless of context.
As soon as I see someone use the phrasing “gun deaths” or the equivalent I ignore the rest. When you’re manipulating language to inflate your premise, your argument is faulty.