Eliot Rodger and Stephen Paddock both passed all of their required background checks for buying firearms. There are, doubtlessly, other mass shooters who had a clean background check at the buying process, too, but I’m at work and can’t spare the time to do research.
Ignoring the issue of straw purchases where someone with a clean background buys guns for someone who can’t legally buy - what exactly can be done to prevent such future shootings? The attitude of many pro-gun activists seems to be a shrug, “Well, such shootings are simply the unavoidable price we pay.” Every criminal has a clean background prior to having his first crime on record.
Banning the sale of assault rifles could have limited the killing of a man like Paddock, but then you are still left with the lesser death tolls of someone like Rodger (and, in fact, Paddock probably could have still killed many people in that huge Vegas crowd of 20,000 people with a pistol, because by taking shots into the crowd every here and there, interspersed with the loud noise of the concert, he might have avoided alerting the rest of the crowd longer that a shooting was underway.)
Short of banning ***all ***gun sales, how exactly do we stop mass shooters who can pass all the background checks required at purchase? Are we just required to accept a mass shooting by a clean shooter every few years or so?
Just the other day a UPS employee was arrested for threatening a mass shooting. Story here. He had 20,000 rounds of ammunition and lots of weapons.
If we could monitor weapon and especially ammunition sales, we might be able to find shooters. Buying lots of weapons in a short time should be a signal. Buying lots of weapons and lots of ammunition in a short time should be a red flag. (Collectors wouldn’t have to worry about this one.) Anyone falling into this category should be investigated and quickly.
I’d think that when someone knows the cops are onto them it might help. And we might be able to warn the workplace. And illegal firearms can get confiscated.
Won’t be perfect, but it should help.
Buying lots of ammo is normal and is primarily done for financial reasons. It’s the same reason people shop at Costco; while Kirkland makes nice products it’s not the primary draw.
I believe the answer is no, there’s no way to stop mass shootings where the shooter is clean without stepping on clean gun owners’ toes, and the more effective the approach to stopping the shootings, the harder you’ll have to stomp.
20,000 rounds say within a week? I wonder how many people do that. The cops seemed to think it was a lot of ammo.
And it shouldn’t be banned or anything, just checked out. Even pre-cleared if it going to be done repeatedly.
This is something where a false positive is not all that costly, but a false negative is catastrophic.
How many rounds of ammo do mass shooters typically fire? You can’t carry more than a few hundred rounds on your person. But it’s pretty common to buy a few hundred rounds for a day or two at the shooting range.
Same thing for weapons. How many guns do you need for a typical mass shooting? A rifle and a pistol will do it. Guns are heavy and bulky, you’re not going to want to carry five of them.
I’m not opposed to stricter scrutiny of gun or ammo purchases, but I think focusing on quantities is barking up the wrong tree.
Well, obviously the guy they arrested disagrees with you. So did the Vegas shooter.
You carry just a rifle and a pistol, and one of them jams, and you don’t to get to kill as many people before someone blows off your head.
The reason for the quantities is so that people who buy reasonable amounts of ammo won’t get hassled. What reasonable is should be determined from data.
ETA: “You” here refers to the generic shooter you, not the you you, just to be clear.
Unless you’re of the opinion that a possible mass killer operates under a premise of only killing with guns then it’s a non-question. A mass killer will just move on to a different method. Instead of buying expensive guns a killer steals a truck and stabs the driver dead.
That’s a line of bullshit straight out of the NRA talking points memo. Gun restrictions are pointless, because every mass murderer would simply have used, I don’t know, his pocket knife, or maybe a frying pan. I mean, why bother? Someone will just use a car, or a truck.
Yeah, the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of innocent bystanders, I guess.
“Reliant” may be the wrong word here. You’re positing that someone forms an intention to commit mass murder, but for some reason the execution of this intention depends on firearms availability.
But you should consider the alternative; that what people are drawn to is not simply killing others, but specifically shooting them. To the extent that that’s the case, then obviously restricting the availability of firearms can make a signficant difference.
There is evidence that people are not indifferent as between different forms of lethal violence. For example, when the UK switched its domestic gas supply from coal gas (lethal) to methane (not lethal) the suicide rate dropped markedly. It seems the people willing to gas themselves were not willing, e.g., to hang themselves or poison themselves. They wanted at least the appearance of a peaceful death.
A reverse phenomenon may be at work here. The mass shooter may specifically want to inflict death through sudden, violent, visible, dramatic force. The role that the gun plays in popular culture may well be a factor in shaping people’s impulses towards mass violence. It’s noteable that when mass killings are perpetrated involving firearms and other methods, the other methods are usually explosions. Mass killers, or some of them, may be motivated specifically by the sense of projecting power that they get from these methods. And to the extent that this is true, it helps to explain why countries with more restrictive firearms laws have fewer such incidents.
Besides, many - most? - mass murderers are cowards. They may be happy to kill unarmed people from a safe distance, but few of them have the stones to get up close and personal with a knife.
With Biden finally offering hope of a victory in November, I expect to make a large purchase fairly soon.
I generally keep 10,000+ rounds in my rotation and went through almost all of it the last time amp process almost doubled in my area. I’d like to avoid that this time around especially if it looks like Bloomberg (who I also would have voted for) is going to be influential in this election