This is the kind of knee-jerk crap that gets to me:
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Examples of assault weapon violence since the expiration of the Federal assault weapons ban can be found at*
The SKS wasn’t even on the list of the useless 1994 “assualt weapons ban”. It’s not an assualt weapon even by that flawed definition. Insinuating that this wouldn’t have happened had the ban still been in effect is beyond ignorance, it’s a lie!
If they had to steal the guns, wouldn’t it increase the likelihood they would be caught before they started shooting? At least a bit?
Microscopic. Guns get stolen all the time, regardless of how well they’re locked up.
It’s one of the most sought after items in burglaries.
But how many of the people in these well-known shootings have used stolen guns? I think the Columbine kids got their weapons illegally, but it sounds like most of them didn’t. It’s definitely an extra layer of trouble, and burglars do get caught sometimes. Perhaps that would help some.
Who cares. It doesn’t matter what kind of gun it was, people are still dead. It’s obviously a gun designed expressly to kill people isn’t it?
How about we close the mall? That would help alot. Can’t kill somebody at the mall if it’s closed. How about we all stay home and hide under our beds?
My brother uses an SKS to hunt with. It’s really not much of an “assualt weapon”. In it’s original form it has a fixed 10 round magazine that has to be loaded with stripper clips. And it’s on a wooden stock. No pistol grip or other features that make libbys froth at the mouth.
You’re right; my proposal that people stay home and hide under their beds was unreasonable. I should have suggested something more moderate, like considering laws that might make it harder for kids to obtain guns.
The answer to the question is yes - it was designed as a military weapon whose purpose was to kill people. It doesn’t matter if the posters brother uses it as a doorstop or has it made into a lamp, it is what it is.
This is a favorite tactic of the gun nuts - parse the definitions of “assault” weapon or “automatic” to death rather than deal with the facts of the situation - you can already see it further upthread. People know what they are talking about - if a shooter can fire off thirty rounds in a minute or so, who gives a crap if they don’t technically have an “automatic” or “assault” weapon? Other than gun nuts, nobody.
To answer the OP, yes, much stricter controls on weapons would make a difference in stopping school shootings. It wouldn’t be a perfect solution and I wouldn’t be in favor of it, but it would make a difference. You’d still have gang violence and the like, but the school/workplace/shopping center stuff would likely decrease.
We already have tons of laws on the books. Thousands regarding guns. Didn’t do much good did they?
And what’s this “kid” stuff. The guy was an adult.
What would you do? Raise the age to possess a firearm? So what? He’d still get one. Steal it, straw purchase, whatever. Ban that type of gun? He could have used a Ruger .22 rifle, a pump shotgun, whatever. Sorry, it’s not a personal attack, but all your little laws and bans and whatnot will do nothing to stop some nut who is set on killing a lot of people.
No it wouldn’t.
And in a country of a third of a billion people school/workplace/shopping center shootings per capita are actually quite rare.
Making it much harder to get the weapons would make them rarer. That is logical and obvious.
If fully automatic weapons were available legally to the general citizenry, do you think that violence involving them would increase or stay exactly the same?
This is not directed at you Menoccho, just a comment on media disclosure.
It is moot to ponder whether or not the media should disclose the names of and other info about mass shooting perps. Even if one or two, of ten media outlets pledged never to name a spree shooter, someone else always would. Knowing this, media outlets just name the perp as soon as they get the info. And, I would agree there are good reasons for doing so. Though I also agree that it would be nice to deny these fuckups any ego-stroking.
Also, any legislative effort to ban media from reporting such info would fail miserably on first amendment grounds.
I’m not even remotely a fan of guns. But I know I can obtain a gun fairly easily. It’s like drugs - you can always get some if you look for 'em. So I don’t think gun control will solve this particular issue.
I do think the media could be far less sensationalistic about the murderers. Stop broadcasting their pictures. Pixellate them instead, or just say “a White male, 19 years old,” and that’s it. I rue the fact that I know names like Cho and Kinkel. I wish I knew the names of the people whose lives they stole.
I do think the coverage of VT was a little better. I remember the RA who had a double major, the Holocaust survivor professor who sacrificed himself for his students. The stories should be about those lives lost, while these specimens become footnotes. And the heroic actions of ordinary people and law enforcement who stop these creeps. It’s not like we’ve learned a lot about preventing this sort of thing with the analysis from the talking heads on CNN…
With a laugh track.
Exactly!
Anything that stops making these kids look tough, misunderstood, romantic and superhuman and started making them look like the impotent, uninteresting buffoons that they are.
No, it isn’t. At one time you could buy an gun through the mail. Since then there have been all sorts of laws, bans, licensing, registrations, waiting periods, etc… Have shootings gone up or down since the implementation of all these regulations?
What dilludes you into thinking more laws would do any better?
Machine guns ARE available legally. They’re legal per federal law and in about 40 states. One just needs to do the paper work with a class 3 dealer and pay the tax.
You’re right, gun laws have never prevented a shooting.
Adult is a legal term, “kid” isn’t. He was 19 and acted like an immature idiot, hence my use of the word. But I was speaking more generally of school shooters, like the Columbine kids, hence my word choice.
When you put it that way, let’s just get rid of all the laws - people are going to do what they want anyway. 
This guy in Omaha does NOT sound like a criminal mastermind, not that a mastermind is required to rob a house. His plan was: buy a gun, wrap it up in a shirt and walk into a mall. I do think it might have been different if it had been harder for him to get one. This wasn’t a revenge thing, it looks like it was somebody who wanted to die and decided to make a big production of it. I don’t know what lengths he would have gone to, and I’ve already noted how incredibly rare these events are. But I’m not convince that nothing can be done about them.
Actually, I would welcome this. Because then the parents could call the cops and they would arrest the nutjob and confiscate the weaponry before innocent people are harmed.
While anti-gun nutjobs like Diane Feinstein and Chuck Schumer consider 20 year-old adults to be ‘kids’, this kind of dishonest attempt to play on the symapthies of those who want to protect the children has no place in honest debate.
I was called insensitive when I commented after the VT shootings that it wouldn’t take long for the anti-gun nutters to start wailing for more laws. It never does. The fact of the matter is, ‘automatic’ and ‘assault rifle’ have very specific definitions, and neither of them cover a semi-automatic SKS. Those are facts. This murderer did not have an automatic rifle, and he did not have an assault rifle. You are the one who is not dealing with facts, only lies and emotional blackmail.
It could just as easily have been done with a revolver.
Which is why the vast majority of these incidents happen in places that are supposedly gun-free school zones (where it’s illegal to have a gun) or gun-free work places (where it’s either illegal or prohibited by the employer). Have you ever heard of anyone going on a rampage at a firing range?
There are an estimated 80,000,000 of them already out there, lawfully owned by private citizens, most of which are unregistered. You could ban them tomorrow and they would hardly become ‘rare’. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle.
It doesn’t need to be national news at all. I’ll probably be flamed to hell and back for saying this, but really, it does not matter to the vast majority of people in this country. Unless you were there, or someone you know personally was actually involved in the incident, your life is not affected in the least by the fact that this shooting, or the one at VT, happened at all.
Tens of thousands of faceless people you’ve (generic ‘you’ from here on out.) never heard of will die this year on US highways. You’ll maybe hear about them if you happen to drive past an accident scene, or if someone you know is among the dead, but the vast majority will never enter your mind at all. They’ll be dying at a rate of 80+ every day, more than have been killed in mass shootings this year, but you’ll never hear of them.
Every single one of those people who died or will die today on a road somewhere in the US has a family and friends who will miss them, just like the people who are killed in a mass shooting, but none of those 80+ people will matter to you. So why should those in a mall? Why do you need to know that they died, when you had no idea before today that they lived?
Why on earth should it be national news?
There is no reason for it.
I can go to a gun show tonight and buy a gun, or go to Wal-Mart. Getting one through the mail is more of a burden than most other routes. Anyone who wants a gun can easily get one - the market is saturated. Small time restrictions on how a gun can be purchased are meaningless. Big time national restrictions and confiscation would make a difference, and anyone with an open mind would agree. I am not saying that would be practical or legal, but if it happened, gun violence would decrease.