Las Vegas shooting

[Dee*Jay]

A background check must be done at an FFL for a legal transaction in every state. Private sales maybe not depending on the state. In your excerpt it says trafficker - that person is already breaking the law by being a trafficker. Straw purchasing is illegal already. Perhaps we should not sell guns across state lines which would do away with the problem of someone buying something that is illegal in their home state. I can see business owners squawking a bit because it would lessen their sales numbers but that is not my problem.

I agree with this. If someone has an Illinois drivers license (or whatever means is being used to provide proof of residence) s/he should not be able to buy a gun in another state. But unfortunately now s/he can. That's another area that could be "improved upon," in my opinion. I read this morning that the Vegas shooter has purchased guns in five states (if I'm recalling the number correctly).

ETA: Forgot to say that obviously I agree with this: In your excerpt it says trafficker - that person is already breaking the law by being a trafficker. Straw purchasing is illegal already.

 

[t-c]

Well, for this guy, it had to happen to him first...

 

[redwood66]

I agree with this. If someone has an Illinois drivers license (or whatever means is being used to provide proof of residence) s/he should not be able to buy a gun in another state. But unfortunately now s/he can. That's another area that could be "improved upon," in my opinion. I read this morning that the Vegas shooter has purchased guns in five states (if I'm recalling the number correctly).

ETA: Forgot to say that obviously I agree with this: In your excerpt it says trafficker - that person is already breaking the law by being a trafficker. Straw purchasing is illegal already.

I totally agree with you that this would be a good improvement and it still allows us to be a republic as intended. Now see how we should be running things?!

 

[Dee*Jay]

I totally agree with you that this would be a good improvement and it still allows us to be a republic as intended. Now see how we should be running things?!

The CB starts many a sentence with "Well when they make ME World Commander... " !!!

 

[Calliecake]

If they made it so you couldn't buy guns in other states what would it change? What difference is it going to make if you are still allowed to buy a gun that can kill many people in a matter of seconds, Not one bit. It would not have prevented this shooter from buying multiple guns in his state. If guns were registered with the government on a national database that would help. Republicans do not want the government knowing how many guns you possess. Nothing will change. Republicans don't want common sense gun laws,

 

[redwood66]

This is an interesting article in WaPo.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amph...3edca6-a851-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html

Leah Libresco is a statistician and former newswriter at FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site.

Article:

I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.

Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I'd lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn't prove much about what America's policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.

When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an "assault weapon." It's an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.

As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don't make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.

As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restriction could make a big difference. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them. I couldn't even answer my most desperate question: If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?

However, the next-largest set of gun deaths — 1 in 5 — were young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides. These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence. And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.

By the time we published our project, I didn't believe in many of the interventions I'd heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don't want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can't endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. Policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have encountered guns only as a figure in a briefing book or an image on the news.

Instead, I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventions. Potential suicide victims, women menaced by their abusive partners and kids swept up in street vendettas are all in danger from guns, but they each require different protections.

Older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritized by police, who can enforce restraining orders prohibiting these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.

Even the most data-driven practices, such as New Orleans' plan to identify gang members for intervention based on previous arrests and weapons seizures, wind up more personal than most policies floated. The young men at risk can be identified by an algorithm, but they have to be disarmed one by one, personally — not en masse as though they were all interchangeable. A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.

 

[Calliecake]

You want someone to rant at and I will not be that for you. Discussion is one thing but you have moved it beyond by making it personal and questioning my empathy for victims. I am fully aware of what criminals do with guns and other items to harm and kill innocent people and it did not take a mass shooting either. People are the problem and yes it could happen to anyone.

@redwood66 You kept asking me repeatedly what I think should be done and yet YOU never offer up any solutions to this problem. This is what I have gotten from your various posts on gun ownership. You feel assualt type guns should not be confiscated, there should be no limits on how many guns you can have, or what type, you don't feel all guns should be registered and put into a national database. You also feel these types of assault rifles should be legal. I think I know what you don't want but have no idea what solutions you have. You don't seem to want to compromise. At least just admit that. Many of us here and in the country are tired of these crimes being acceptable. Why keep posting if you aren't going to say what you think should be done?

The NRA refuse to make compromises. It's pretty clear reading your posts you feel the same way. I'n not being disrespectful just stating what I am seeing in your posts. Am I wrong?

You didn't hear me saying that someone would feel I have no empathy. Why is that? Because I have empathy.

 

[redwood66]

@redwood66 You kept asking me repeatedly what I think should be done and yet YOU never offer up any solutions to this problem. This is what I have gotten from your various posts on gun ownership. You feel assualt type guns should not be confiscated, there should be no limits on how many guns you can have, or what type, you don't feel all guns should be registered and put into a national database. You also feel these types of assault rifles should be legal. I think I know what you don't want but have no idea what solutions you have. You don't seem to want to compromise. At least just admit that. Many of us here and in the country are tired of these crimes being acceptable. Why keep posting if you aren't going to say what you think should be done?

The NRA refuse to make compromises. It's pretty clear reading your posts you feel the same way. I'n not being disrespectful just stating what I am seeing in your posts. Am I wrong?

You didn't hear me saying that someone would feel I have no empathy. Why is that? Because I have empathy.

Please read the article I posted. It will give you the information you seek because I agree with that anti-gun person's article completely. And I did just agree with Dee on a solution to Illinois' problem of guns from Indiana.

I understand you are upset.

 

[Calliecake]

Has anyone read the article the New York Times ran yesterday titled "if Only Stephen Paddock Were a Muslim" by Thomas L. Friedman. Excellent article.

 

[Calliecake]

I will go read the article you posted @redwood66

Please read the article I mentioned above.

 

[redwood66]

I will go read the article you posted @redwood66

I put it in the post so people don't have to click or if they can't read WaPo.

 

[t-c]

This is an interesting article in WaPo.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amph...3edca6-a851-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html

Leah Libresco is a statistician and former newswriter at FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site.

Article:

I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.

Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I'd lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn't prove much about what America's policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.

When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an "assault weapon." It's an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.

As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don't make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.

As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restriction could make a big difference. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them. I couldn't even answer my most desperate question: If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?

However, the next-largest set of gun deaths — 1 in 5 — were young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides. These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence. And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.

By the time we published our project, I didn't believe in many of the interventions I'd heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don't want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can't endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. Policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have encountered guns only as a figure in a briefing book or an image on the news.

Instead, I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventions. Potential suicide victims, women menaced by their abusive partners and kids swept up in street vendettas are all in danger from guns, but they each require different protections.

Older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritized by police, who can enforce restraining orders prohibiting these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.

Even the most data-driven practices, such as New Orleans' plan to identify gang members for intervention based on previous arrests and weapons seizures, wind up more personal than most policies floated. The young men at risk can be identified by an algorithm, but they have to be disarmed one by one, personally — not en masse as though they were all interchangeable. A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.

My issue with this op-ed piece is that she doesn't take into consideration that some gun policies could reduce the number of guns "in the wild".

For example, she writes, "If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?" She may not be able to do something about her friend who has a gun, but she conveniently ignores the fact that making it harder for suicidal people to access guns reduces suicide (see New Republic's "Gun Control Could Save Veterans' Lives" which cites Israel's policy of not letting soldiers take their guns home reduced suicide rate by 40%). She completely gives up potentially saving others in the future because she couldn't save people now -- talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Regarding magazine limits, again, she throws her hands up because an expert can switch them out so quickly? But what if the shooter isn't an expert and isn't practiced. I heard the people that went through the Las Vegas shooting all say something like 'there was a break in the shooting, he must have been reloading, and that's when we ran'. I would like my shooter as inconvenienced as possible. A lot of the mass shootings covered by the media weren't being done in the comfort of a hotel room so if the shooter has to carry a bunch more magazines or has to reload a bunch of times, it gives people time to save themselves. So again, because of one issue/objection, this op-ed writer completely gives up on limiting magazine size and says nothing will work.

About the silencer, it may not reduce the sound of gun shots (if this is so, why would the NRA bother with the Hearing Protection Act?). But what does it sound like 400 yards or even more away? Will it be harder for police to locate the shooter is if the sound is muffled and seems farther away?

What burns my butt with this issue is the "we can't do anything about it so let's just keep selling more guns while we wring our hands and wait for the perfect legislation". The reason this issue seems intractable is because there are so many guns in the public, but if restrictions on gun ownership are imposed now in conjunction with other programs, the gun numbers just might eventually go down.

I'm tired of this "we can't do anything about it so let's not even try" bullshit.

 

[katharath]

What burns my butt with this issue is the "we can't do anything about it so let's just keep selling more guns while we wring our hands and wait for the perfect legislation". The reason this issue seems intractable is because there are so many guns in the public, but if restrictions on gun ownership are imposed now in conjunction with other programs, the gun numbers just might eventually go down.

I'm tired of this "we can't do anything about it so let's not even try" bullshit.

So much this. Our situation continues to spiral out of control - is it a coincidence that, as our massacres only grow worse, people have more guns and easier access to guns than ever before? OF COURSE NOT. So we should, what, just allow this to keep going? Make it EASIER to get MORE GUNS? And then just hope that it will stop? Who on Earth with a hint of sense would find that a credible plan?

What we're doing isn't working!!! "More guns" and "laxer laws" are the answers of people who aren't thinking clearly, and that's the nicest way I can say that.

 

[redwood66]

There was a ban on "assault" weapons and magazine sizes. I posted an article earlier that showed this did not do much to decrease gun violence (actually it's violence committed by people). Fact is most violence using guns is not done with "assault" weapons or rifles, but handguns. Which is why what the author in WaPo suggests are better than any ban. That is why I am against the "do something" that really does nothing but make people feel better. It makes them no safer. Frankly I don't need magazines larger than 20rds. It is illegal to hunt with a magazine larger than 5 rds.

I am not sure I understand the "more" guns and "laxer" laws and "easier" to get @katharath ? What do you mean by this?

 

[t-c]

There was a ban on "assault" weapons and magazine sizes. I posted an article earlier that showed this did not do much to decrease gun violence (actually it's violence committed by people). Fact is most violence using guns is not done with "assault" weapons or rifles, but handguns. Which is why what the author in WaPo suggests are better than any ban. That is why I am against the "do something" that really does nothing but make people feel better. It makes them no safer. Frankly I don't need magazines larger than 20rds. It is illegal to hunt with a magazine larger than 5 rds.

So clearly we need to reduce the handguns as well. Just because banning "assault" weapons didn't reduce gun violence doesn't mean we give up trying to figure out how to reduce gun violence. Sure, help suicidal people and victims of domestic violence and reduce domestic violence, but taking a whole range of options off the table ('pry my gun from my cold dead hands') is just as bad as proposing useless legislation -- in fact, it's worse. At least the useless legislation isn't going to result in someone getting killed.

 

[OreoRosies86]

My issue with this op-ed piece is that she doesn't take into consideration that some gun policies could reduce the number of guns "in the wild".

For example, she writes, "If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?" She may not be able to do something about her friend who has a gun, but she conveniently ignores the fact that making it harder for suicidal people to access guns reduces suicide (see New Republic's "Gun Control Could Save Veterans' Lives" which cites Israel's policy of not letting soldiers take their guns home reduced suicide rate by 40%). She completely gives up potentially saving others in the future because she couldn't save people now -- talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Regarding magazine limits, again, she throws her hands up because an expert can switch them out so quickly? But what if the shooter isn't an expert and isn't practiced. I heard the people that went through the Las Vegas shooting all say something like 'there was a break in the shooting, he must have been reloading, and that's when we ran'. I would like my shooter as inconvenienced as possible. A lot of the mass shootings covered by the media weren't being done in the comfort of a hotel room so if the shooter has to carry a bunch more magazines or has to reload a bunch of times, it gives people time to save themselves. So again, because of one issue/objection, this op-ed writer completely gives up on limiting magazine size and says nothing will work.

About the silencer, it may not reduce the sound of gun shots (if this is so, why would the NRA bother with the Hearing Protection Act?). But what does it sound like 400 yards or even more away? Will it be harder for police to locate the shooter is if the sound is muffled and seems farther away?

What burns my butt with this issue is the "we can't do anything about it so let's just keep selling more guns while we wring our hands and wait for the perfect legislation". The reason this issue seems intractable is because there are so many guns in the public, but if restrictions on gun ownership are imposed now in conjunction with other programs, the gun numbers just might eventually go down.

I'm tired of this "we can't do anything about it so let's not even try" bullshit.

There is no reason on earth to have the arsenals people have available for purchase. Anyone who says otherwise without cold hard reasons why we don't need to get rid of them is essentially just saying "because I should be able to do what I want."

 

[arkieb1]

I'm an Aussie and for every one document put out by people from the gun lobby that incorrectly says reducing all guns and implementing much stricter gun laws here didn't work, let me tell you that is complete B/S. We had a mass shooting of way way less people that this and our government was lobbied into action and actually got rid of a lot of guns, and statistically I can show you many studies saying it has reduced these types of incidents and deaths. The same solution will never work in the US because there are way too many guns, and no one with half a brain is suggesting you do exactly the same thing as here.

The other thing that really irritates me is that gun owners suddenly think they have to give up their guns. People can still own guns here, it's a myth they cannot. Farmers, even every day people like me can indeed apply and get a gun license. My husband has a gun license, my young nephew in his late teens early 20s has a gun license and goes hunting in rural Australia on a regular basis.

So all of these arguments are counter productive. There are two main issues at play here, one - that you need consistent gun laws and regulation across every state, NOT on a state by state basis, so when people go to buy guns it's the same for every single person across the US. If it's tough to get a gun, get over it, it's for the good of everyone and normal decent people can still get one.

Secondly - this is about the regulation of and generally having less rapid fire weapons. They aren't wonderful tools for hunting but as we have seen they are brilliant at killing lots of people in a short amount of time. If you need to cull some type of animal this way then get a permit to do so and have these type of guns legally, everyone else should get the hell over it because again it's a common sense that limiting the amount of these types of weapons, is for the greater good of everyone not just those people obsessed with owning them. And if you want to use these types of guns for sport go to gun ranges and regulate them. Gun ranges have to have licenses and secure areas to keep them not every day citizens.

We all know something needs to change here, and until it does more of these incidents will happen. The US isn't a third world country run by drug lords or a country with a civil war going on so it's time your politicians grew a set of balls and actually said we are going to have uniform consistent laws that will help prevent this type of s@#* from happening again. And if some dude gets into a truck, creates a bomb or flies into a building instead, again accept that is one incident to deal with, be thankful for the other hundred or more unstable people out there that would have gotten rapid fire weapons and done goodness knows what with them. It's not an either or situation, and I'm sick of people saying it is, it's a matter of saying 55 dead and 500+ injured in a so call "civilised" society is just plain unacceptable period. Enough is enough. Do something.

 

[redwood66]

So clearly we need to reduce the handguns as well. Just because banning "assault" weapons didn't reduce gun violence doesn't mean we give up trying to figure out how to reduce gun violence. Sure, help suicidal people and victims of domestic violence and reduce domestic violence, but taking a whole range of options off the table ('pry my gun from my cold dead hands') is just as bad as proposing useless legislation -- in fact, it's worse. At least the useless legislation isn't going to result in someone getting killed.

Affecting a large section of the population with "useless" legislation just to make other people feel better is unnecessarily oppressive in my book. BTW I never use that ridiculous line you posted.

 

[OreoRosies86]

 

[arkieb1]

Affecting a large section of the population with "useless" legislation just to make other people feel better is unnecessarily oppressive in my book. BTW I never use that ridiculous line you posted.

Allowing a small amount of wealthy powerful white men to control and indeed define gun ownership in your country is equally ridiculous. It's time to take a stand and actually say enough is enough and do something. Who says the legislation has to be useless? What needs to be done here is an agreement between the gun lobby and everyone else that you have a better set of regulations the same ones across every state and everyone follows them. If the NRA spent as much money with positive advertising campaigns promoting such laws and encouraging all gun owners to be responsible and follow them, as they do buying off politicians you might actually achieve something.

 

[t-c]

Affecting a large section of the population with "useless" legislation just to make other people feel better is unnecessarily oppressive in my book. BTW I never use that ridiculous line you posted.

I'd rather have useless legislation that affects no one and does nothing than be shot. I'm pretty sure 585 people in Las Vegas on October 1 would agree with me, except 58 of them can't anymore.

 

[redwood66]

I'd rather have useless legislation that affects no one and does nothing than be shot. I'm pretty sure 585 people in Las Vegas on October 1 would agree with me, except 58 of them can't anymore.

I understand your point of view and anger? at the horrible act and his method. I have my quoted POV on any legislation that does nothing but still negatively affects a large portion of the population, it is not limited to guns.

 

[redwood66]

Allowing a small amount of wealthy powerful white men to control and indeed define gun ownership in your country is equally ridiculous. It's time to take a stand and actually say enough is enough and do something. Who says the legislation has to be useless? What needs to be done here is an agreement between the gun lobby and everyone else that you have a better set of regulations the same ones across every state and everyone follows them. If the NRA spent as much money with positive advertising campaigns promoting such laws and encouraging all gun owners to be responsible and follow them, as they do buying off politicians you might actually achieve something.

I am not an NRA member nor do I agree with all they do.

 

[Tekate]

Callie, I was watching the PBS newshour and they had on a senator from Oklahoma, James something, he was asked why we need these guns and their attachments to make them rapid, he said because people like to shoot them at the gun range, I sh-- you not. BUT this is why people want them, to feel like they have some control over the uncontrollable, is the uncontrollable real and feasible? nah.

If we truly followed the Constitution all we would allow is muskets.

I saw on Facebook a meme: It said if guns don't kill people that means atomic bombs don't kill people, people do. ha! that made me laugh (in a bad way!). Guns kill people, I read two days about about a toddler that shot himself in the head, BAD parent, not bad gun, a woman who I was great friends with in Austin son got in trouble in school got yelled at and went home and got out his Dad's gun case, took a gun, went to the shed and shot himself in the head, 15! dang just those two situations make me cry and make me anti gun.

As Americans we need to give up our love of guns for the good of the few. It's that simple to me.

Peace to all.

I agree @Elliot86. I need to take another look at the meme you sent me the other day. This is insanity and I'm just getting angry and sad. And why because people feel they are so special that they have no regard for innocent people. It just wrong and easy to see that no compromise will ever take place. No one has said to remove the 2nd amendment. Just start using common sense in what should be allowed. I think that would be a great compromise, as I hate guns. The republicans don't want to comprise. They want it their way and for the rest of us to see it as they do. It's wrong on so many levels.

 

[Tekate]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mass-shootings-are-a-bad-way-to-understand-gun-violence/

Suicide accounts for 33% of gun deaths. We need laws to protect suicides, victims of mass murder, victims of gangs. But no one law will save everyone is what the woman in your quoted article is saying. So I say let's start with banning rapid firing guns and the ability to make these guns out of semi automatics. It's a start. Yes it only takes one bullet to kill yourself and if we take it all the way down to really help the suicides then we need to ban all guns, but then again, a person bent on killing themselves will kill themselves, to say it sort of meanly, but truthfully, they are only hurting themselves. Let's start somewhere.

This is an interesting article in WaPo.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amph...3edca6-a851-11e7-92d1-58c702d2d975_story.html

Leah Libresco is a statistician and former newswriter at FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism site.

Article:

I used to think gun control was the answer. My research told me otherwise.

Before I started researching gun deaths, gun-control policy used to frustrate me. I wished the National Rifle Association would stop blocking common-sense gun-control reforms such as banning assault weapons, restricting silencers, shrinking magazine sizes and all the other measures that could make guns less deadly.

Then, my colleagues and I at FiveThirtyEight spent three months analyzing all 33,000 lives ended by guns each year in the United States, and I wound up frustrated in a whole new way. We looked at what interventions might have saved those people, and the case for the policies I'd lobbied for crumbled when I examined the evidence. The best ideas left standing were narrowly tailored interventions to protect subtypes of potential victims, not broad attempts to limit the lethality of guns.

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn't prove much about what America's policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths.

When I looked at the other oft-praised policies, I found out that no gun owner walks into the store to buy an "assault weapon." It's an invented classification that includes any semi-automatic that has two or more features, such as a bayonet mount, a rocket-propelled grenade-launcher mount, a folding stock or a pistol grip. But guns are modular, and any hobbyist can easily add these features at home, just as if they were snapping together Legos.

As for silencers — they deserve that name only in movies, where they reduce gunfire to a soft puick puick. In real life, silencers limit hearing damage for shooters but don't make gunfire dangerously quiet. An AR-15 with a silencer is about as loud as a jackhammer. Magazine limits were a little more promising, but a practiced shooter could still change magazines so fast as to make the limit meaningless.

As my co-workers and I kept looking at the data, it seemed less and less clear that one broad gun-control restriction could make a big difference. Two-thirds of gun deaths in the United States every year are suicides. Almost no proposed restriction would make it meaningfully harder for people with guns on hand to use them. I couldn't even answer my most desperate question: If I had a friend who had guns in his home and a history of suicide attempts, was there anything I could do that would help?

However, the next-largest set of gun deaths — 1 in 5 — were young men aged 15 to 34, killed in homicides. These men were most likely to die at the hands of other young men, often related to gang loyalties or other street violence. And the last notable group of similar deaths was the 1,700 women murdered per year, usually as the result of domestic violence. Far more people were killed in these ways than in mass-shooting incidents, but few of the popularly floated policies were tailored to serve them.

By the time we published our project, I didn't believe in many of the interventions I'd heard politicians tout. I was still anti-gun, at least from the point of view of most gun owners, and I don't want a gun in my home, as I think the risk outweighs the benefits. But I can't endorse policies whose only selling point is that gun owners hate them. Policies that often seem as if they were drafted by people who have encountered guns only as a figure in a briefing book or an image on the news.

Instead, I found the most hope in more narrowly tailored interventions. Potential suicide victims, women menaced by their abusive partners and kids swept up in street vendettas are all in danger from guns, but they each require different protections.

Older men, who make up the largest share of gun suicides, need better access to people who could care for them and get them help. Women endangered by specific men need to be prioritized by police, who can enforce restraining orders prohibiting these men from buying and owning guns. Younger men at risk of violence need to be identified before they take a life or lose theirs and to be connected to mentors who can help them de-escalate conflicts.

Even the most data-driven practices, such as New Orleans' plan to identify gang members for intervention based on previous arrests and weapons seizures, wind up more personal than most policies floated. The young men at risk can be identified by an algorithm, but they have to be disarmed one by one, personally — not en masse as though they were all interchangeable. A reduction in gun deaths is most likely to come from finding smaller chances for victories and expanding those solutions as much as possible. We save lives by focusing on a range of tactics to protect the different kinds of potential victims and reforming potential killers, not from sweeping bans focused on the guns themselves.

 

[Calliecake]

@Tekate Azstonie and I were talking this afternoon about how we have to show ID and sign on the dotted line for our damn Zyrtec D allergy meds so the government can track that we are not buying more than one pack every 30 days and yet you can get a gun so easily. No one makes you wait 30 days to buy another one. NO flags are raised if you buy a new gun every day. It's insane.

 

[Calliecake]

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mass-shootings-are-a-bad-way-to-understand-gun-violence/

Suicide accounts for 33% of gun deaths. We need laws to protect suicides, victims of mass murder, victims of gangs. But no one law will save everyone is what the woman in your quoted article is saying. So I say let's start with banning rapid firing guns and the ability to make these guns out of semi automatics. It's a start. Yes it only takes one bullet to kill yourself and if we take it all the way down to really help the suicides then we need to ban all guns, but then again, a person bent on killing themselves will kill themselves, to say it sort of meanly, but truthfully, they are only hurting themselves. Let's start somewhere.

The problem is the republicans don't want to start fixing this at all. They have no problem if people die just as long as they get to keep their guns. If 20 small children being riddled with bullets didn't change their attitude I seriously doubt 600 people being shot will either. Now if the shooter was a Muslim all sorts of things would be changed. Trump would be yelling that this can never happen again. New laws would be put in place. If it's a white man doing the shooting nothing happens. Just lots of prayers.

 

[arkieb1]

I am not an NRA member nor do I agree with all they do.

I'm not suggesting that you are. What do you suggest? If you do nothing then it seems to me that all that will do is give every crazy idiot in your society an open book to do more of the same. Surely, you have to agree that doing something is better than nothing?

Having better more restrictive gun laws might be a pain in the backside but if everyone gets on board and it saves lives then it would be worth the short term pain.

 

[t-c]

I understand your point of view and anger? at the horrible act and his method. I have my quoted POV on any legislation that does nothing but still negatively affects a large portion of the population, it is not limited to guns.

Save the platitudes. I'm not angry because of these horrible acts. I'm angry and frustrated because these horrible acts KEEP HAPPENING. I'm sick and tired of people who say they feel terrible for the victims yet don't actually intend to support any legislation or policy or anything that attempt to stop these, because the bottom line is they choose their guns over people's lives.

 

[Calliecake]

You are wasting your time @arkieb1. I asked her for suggestions all afternoon. She feels people should be allowed their assault type rifles that can shoot 600 people in 9 minutes. Expect to hear about 2nd amendment rights. I'm just trying to save you from a lot of aggravation.

See @Elliot86 I'm learning from your advice LOL