Y’know, I saw the title of this thread and honestly thought it was going to be anti-gun. You know, “Guns clearly didn’t help in this case even though they were used. Therefore, guns are not an effective method of self-defensive.” Which would have been a bit too strong, admittedly, since cases like this one are pretty rare, but it at least would have had some logic to it. But saying that the threat of the potential existence of a gun would have mattered, when multiple actual shots didn’t? The mind boggles.
I guess pistol are generally kept loaded, but the OP mentioned assault rifles, and as a soldier I never used to walk around town with a loaded rifle.
Now that I think about it, the OP may not know what an AK-47 is, and maybe just threw out the first gun name that came to mind.
Gun rights activists here in the US who have mistaken ideas about what your gun laws in Israel are like will often post pictures of [what I believe are] your military reservists going about their business in public wearing civilian clothes and with a slung assault rifle. I understand the weapon is not loaded, but are they carrying a loaded magazine on their persons?
If the homeless guy had had a gun…he probably would have sold it and used the money for food, or a couple nights’ shelter, or booze, or drugs, or something else that would have had more immediate benefit.
Carrying a rifle without ammo is kind of pointless, don’t you think? Regulations say that if you’re carrying a weapon, you have to have ammunition on you (unless you’re supposed to be firing blanks in an exercise or ceremony or something, in which case live ammo is a major no-no). Armed soldiers are supposed to be able to assist in the defense of the public at all times.
Also, there’s a major difference between guns held by civilians and guns held by soldiers, even if they’re the same person. If I wanted to buy a pistol, for instance, I’d have to jump through more hoops and pay more taxes than anywhere in the U.S.; however, for three weeks a year they just hand me a rifle and as much ammo as I want and tell me I have to carry it wherever I go, even if I hop home for a visit. It can be weird to outsiders, I suppose
Not weird, but interesting! Are you actually on active duty, 24/7, during those three weeks, or do they tell you to go about your normal business but play cop if you see something off?
Active duty - uniforms, tents, life-fire exercises, patrols, the works. Same as regular troops.
It’s fun - like a fishing trip, only less booze.
Actually shooting the guy once didn’t stop him either.
No doubt about unloaded rifles being of little use. I asked, however, for two reasons:
- Militaries since they were first organized have been known to do pointless things.
- The same people who post pics of you also post pics of Swiss citizens carrying their military rifles to and from training and the range. Theirs are definitely not loaded, I wasn’t sure about yours.
Sounds like the US National Guard. Except yours is probably mandatory. 
To be fair, I kinda wish the US’s was, too. Trade that time-served in for education; win-win.
This, or, it would have been stolen off him while he slept. This is what happens, sooner or later, to most objects of any real value that you try to hang onto when you are homeless.
I am surprised no one has wondered how differently this would have turned out if the gentleman out of his mind on bath salts was packing.
Now, IIRC, both men were homeless, so the bath salts guy would likely face the same difficulties as his victim in terms of access to firearms and ammo. But my point is that people like him are exactly why adding guns to the equation does not exactly make things safer. The victim was, I believe, passed out, & likely intoxicated. Suppose he did have a gun, and Mr. Crazypants found it on him while he was sleeping? If he was cognizant enough to know what a gun was, I bet he would have been cognizant enough to fire one at whomever. Bothersome cops trying to interrupt his meal, for example.
He’d probably have ditched the gun along with his car, clothes and sanity.
Poe’s Law is the starting point for any gun-related politics discussion on this board.
Nope, the attacker was definitely not homeless. It’s actually pretty startling how much of a relatively average guy he reportedly was for his age.
As for what drugs he was on, it has only been speculated by police that it was “LSD” and by others that it was bath-salts. I put LSD in quotes, because even if the police are right, it still probably wasn’t really LSD. The police have seen a few similar cases of erratic and violent behavior from people who took something they were told was LSD. Pretty obviously to anyone who knows about the effects of LSD, there was almost certainly little to no actual LSD in whatever it is that they were on.
Someone’s peddling some really nasty shit under the guise of LSD, and hopefully this case will shed some light on it from the toxicology reports, and put an end to the practice.
In that case, he would almost certainly have more access to, and ability to maintain, a firearm.
No offense, but I really don’t think anyone could accurately predict what someone that disturbed would do with a firearm. I don’t think it is out of the question that, had he happened upon a slumbering homeless man and found a gun in his clothes, he might have used it. I mean, he was eating a dude’s face—he was clearly in a somewhat violent frame of mind.
As for what he was on, the ‘bath salts’ drug is being sold as a legal, safe sort of meth-like/hallucinogenic high-or it was at first. Several states have banned it, due to stories like the one about the guy in the link below, who apparently later (much later-several months) shot himself while on the drug. It is supposedly very addictive.
(The video starts with a 911 call and shots of synthetic cannabis subs, which is confusing, because they are not the same as bath salts–they are just available in the same kinds of head shops/online designer recreational drug websites.)
