Author Topic: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.  (Read 102282 times)

zolotiyeruki

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #100 on: October 03, 2017, 01:28:32 PM »



Your argument that gun control laws don't work because one man got around them is total bullshit. Since Jan 2013 there has been 1516 mass shootings in the US (population 323 million). Norway (population 5 million) should then proportionally and statically have had... 23.46. As far as I know (and I live in this region of the world, and regularly watch Norwegian telly - I haven't been able to find any statistics..) None.. Zip.. Nada... Anders Breivik's attack was in 2011, and totally skewed gun deaths statistics in Norway.
The "1516" number is utter hogwash.  It was created by compiling every incident that could be interpreted to fit in a very broad classification of "mass shooting."

That definition is four or more casualties. I'm not sure it's "hogwash", but I agree it's a broad definition. It's nevertheless an admirable attempt to compile statistical and comparable evidence. How many victims do you think constitutes a mass killing? 20? 40? 60? Personally any fatal shooting is too much for me... And funnily enough the two incidents I mentioned in Denmark, don't meet this definition of mass shooting. That doesn't make them any less tragic for the victims..
I do not wish to minimize the impact on people impacted by shootings. I can only imagine how traumatic it must be for those who have to deal with it.  When I think of "mass shooting," I envision events like this one, Sandy Hook, Anders Breivik, Columbine, Fort Hood, etc. where one person (or a group of people) attempt to kill as many unarmed, innocent people as possible.  The 1516 number includes police-involved shootings (which I don't think are relevant) a lot of gang shootouts (where both sides are bad guys), and incidents where uninvolved bystanders were hurt or killed unintentionally, along with (IIRC) many cases where unrelated shootings happened within a relatively short period of time and geographic area.

Why not just some form of smart gun that can be remotely disabled by law enforcement (and that would disable itself if you tried to modify it)? The tech exists to make those right now, and you could make the system secure enough that your average Joe Burglar isn't going to be able to disable your gun with some stuff he bought at Radio Shack.

You'd keep the self-protection angle, can go hunting as much as you want, can target shoot to your heart's content, etc.  You lose the "fight against the tyrannical gov't" bit, but I think we can all agree that's crazed fantasy anyway. I mean, Red Dawn is a great movie, but you don't fight a modern army with small arms anyway.

It would be expensive, for sure. And there are an awful lot of legacy guns that will be around for the foreseeable future. So probably not workable, but something like that seems like the best way forward to me.
That idea of a smart gun has been thoroughly explored, and even brought to market!  Gun owners have roundly rejected it for very good reasons.
1) A gun has one job to do: go bang when you pull the trigger in an emergency situation.  Anything (and I mean ANYTHING) that interferes with that one purpose simply isn't going to fly.
2) There are too many things that can go wrong with such a device.  Dead battery, sweaty palms, heaven forbid you're injured and your hand is bloody and the fingerprint sensor doesn't work
3) A gun is an inherently mechanical device, and it will be vulnerable where the electronics meet the mechanicals.
4) They're easy to hack.

waltworks

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #101 on: October 03, 2017, 01:35:33 PM »
Sure, it's a hard engineering problem. But it's just an engineering problem. A bottom of the barrel used smartphone can do all the stuff you need to do.

Let's say you could solve the reliability issue (keeping in mind that no gun is perfectly reliable, of course) and battery life (seems pretty easy to me, you'd just need to make sure you charged your gun occasionally just like you'd need to load it or clean it). No need for fingerprint sensors or any of that, this is just a device that can be remotely disabled (but only by LE with the right crypto). People could still murder each other with it, people could still steal it and do terrible things, but it would be *harder* to use for a mass shooting because the cops could shut it down.

Appealing at all? It doesn't seem to me that gun confiscation is realistic or legal (or desirable), and that's really the only other way to deal with this problem. As many people have pointed out, background checks and magazine size laws and all that are easy to circumvent. If I want to kill people, breaking a gun law is the least of my concerns.

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Midwest

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #102 on: October 03, 2017, 01:44:08 PM »
Walt - how would a smart gun have impacted what happened in vegas or many of the other mass shootings?

zolotiyeruki

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #103 on: October 03, 2017, 01:51:05 PM »
From your link:
"It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true."

Is that not what you are asking us to do by saying, "prove that it would have stopped the Las Vegas shooter by using these measures"? It's the same thing.

And let me reiterate, if you are a good, law abiding citizen with no serious criminal record and no discoverable mental health issues, I think almost everyone here is ok with you having a gun for your target practice and your peace of mind.

Again, regulations DO NOT EQUAL gun grabbing.

In regards to the bump stock statement, it sure seems like all of those things in combination would set off red flags, just like flying frequently in specific ways for specific amounts of time sets off red flags for being on the no-fly list. "He could improvise a makeshift bump stock, so bump stocks should be legal" is an identical argument to someone saying "he can improvise a fully automatic weapon, so fully automatic weapons should be legal". Yet I don't see you making that argument...
Since you're the one proposing that additional mental health checks might have helped, the burden of proof is on you.  Saying something like  "maybe a different check for mental health would have caught him" is just like saying "maybe some new gun control measures would have stopped him" without specifying *what* the mental health check or the gun control measure is.  It's arguing a hypothetical.

If someone is mentally sound enough to own a rifle, why would they not also be mentally sound enough to own a bumpfire stock?  For what it's worth, I think a fair number of ATF regulations are pointless, but since this discussion is primarily about imposing new gun regulations rather than loosening existing ones, I'll save that soapbox for another day.

Regulations != gun grabbing?  It sure seems like that's exactly what happened in Australia, and it sure is what happened in the UK.  And it's happening in the US, too, as a result of New York's SAFE Act.  A fair number of people have been erroneously (and in come cases, maliciously) placed on a list, and the cops come calling to confiscate weapons, without any due process.

Sure, it's a hard engineering problem. But it's just an engineering problem. A bottom of the barrel used smartphone can do all the stuff you need to do.

Let's say you could solve the reliability issue (keeping in mind that no gun is perfectly reliable, of course) and battery life (seems pretty easy to me, you'd just need to make sure you charged your gun occasionally just like you'd need to load it or clean it). No need for fingerprint sensors or any of that, this is just a device that can be remotely disabled (but only by LE with the right crypto). People could still murder each other with it, people could still steal it and do terrible things, but it would be *harder* to use for a mass shooting because the cops could shut it down.
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.  No, it's not "just an engineering problem."  The very premise of smart guns is flawed.  And charging up the battery is not like cleaning it.  A handgun may sit for months or years in a drawer in case of emergency.  There's no need to clean it or load it for that whole time.

The whole "can be disabled by law enforcement" is a hard one to sell as well, given the anti-gun proclivities of some local/county/state governments.  That's a cultural issue, not an engineering one :)

Walt - how would a smart gun have impacted what happened in vegas or many of the other mass shootings?
The idea is that law enforcement could have hypothetically disabled this man's guns in order to limit further carnage.

waltworks

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #104 on: October 03, 2017, 01:58:21 PM »
I was thinking the massive LE presence would mean someone could shut down the shooter's guns within a minute or two. It was, after all, a concert with 20k people, and Las Vegas is full of cops.

I'm actually pretty impressed that SWAT got there in ~10 minutes. That's pretty amazing. If you just needed an officer to hit a button and shut down the guns, you'd cut that response time down dramatically.

Again, not a perfect solution. But it seems more workable than anything else I hear.

Of course it's possible there's just not a solution, in which case you shake your head and move on, rather than just trotting out the same old arguments again and again. If having guns available comes at a cost of lots of homicides using guns, and we're ok with that (and honestly, that's basically what we've decided) then we should probably just not worry about it.

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MissMoneyBags

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #105 on: October 03, 2017, 02:00:57 PM »



Your argument that gun control laws don't work because one man got around them is total bullshit. Since Jan 2013 there has been 1516 mass shootings in the US (population 323 million). Norway (population 5 million) should then proportionally and statically have had... 23.46. As far as I know (and I live in this region of the world, and regularly watch Norwegian telly - I haven't been able to find any statistics..) None.. Zip.. Nada... Anders Breivik's attack was in 2011, and totally skewed gun deaths statistics in Norway.
The "1516" number is utter hogwash.  It was created by compiling every incident that could be interpreted to fit in a very broad classification of "mass shooting."

That definition is four or more casualties. I'm not sure it's "hogwash", but I agree it's a broad definition. It's nevertheless an admirable attempt to compile statistical and comparable evidence. How many victims do you think constitutes a mass killing? 20? 40? 60? Personally any fatal shooting is too much for me... And funnily enough the two incidents I mentioned in Denmark, don't meet this definition of mass shooting. That doesn't make them any less tragic for the victims..
I do not wish to minimize the impact on people impacted by shootings. I can only imagine how traumatic it must be for those who have to deal with it.  When I think of "mass shooting," I envision events like this one, Sandy Hook, Anders Breivik, Columbine, Fort Hood, etc. where one person (or a group of people) attempt to kill as many unarmed, innocent people as possible.  The 1516 number includes police-involved shootings (which I don't think are relevant) a lot of gang shootouts (where both sides are bad guys), and incidents where uninvolved bystanders were hurt or killed unintentionally, along with (IIRC) many cases where unrelated shootings happened within a relatively short period of time and geographic area.



We can argue all we want about the definition of mass shooting (and quite frankly I'm horrified if your definition is 13 or more victims as suggested by your examples - that just shows how numbed and indifferent we have all become..)

Mass shootings by police, or gang related murders quite frankly shouldn't be happening either- nor can they be justified or dismissed in such sweeping terms. What happened to incapacitating suspects instead of aiming for the heart or head? What are the statistics of correlation between number of gang members and gun ownership? Is it just possible that guns CREATE gangs? Again the evidence shows that there's a correlation between those shootings and gun ownership proportional to population..

The countries I think are relevant to compare to the US are: Canada, Australia, and western Europe, in particular the UK. I spoke about Norway, because Anders Breivik was brought up in the discussion. And Denmark because I used to live there. The UK have huge problems with gang related crime with some guns involved - but guess what? Gun deaths (whether by mass shootings, gang crime, or police shootings) are still way below that of the US (proportional to population!).


Malloy

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #106 on: October 03, 2017, 02:05:29 PM »
With all that said, I've a couple of questions for the folks shooting down all the gun-control measures. Why does the US have so much higher a rate of gun violence than other developed countries, even adjusted for population? Do you think that the US should do anything to prevent mass shootings and lessen our rates of gun violence?

But most importantly, if none of the gun control measures anyone is proposing would work for reasons XYZ (which I'm willing to believe--I'm no expert!), what do you think we should do instead?
US's high murder rate - This is the question that I feel needs to be discussed first.  I read a while back that the FBI estimates that about 75% of gun murders are tied to gang activity.  I don't know a lot about crime rates in Europe, but gang activity appears to be far worse in the US than in many of the countries with which the US is often compared.  You also need to be careful when choosing countries to compare with, because you can make a pretty chart supporting either side of the argument by careful selection of the countries you compare.

Lessening the rates of gun violence is a very different question from preventing mass shootings.  Gun violence in general is largely driven by gang activity, so I'd suggest focusing efforts on cracking down on gangs and changing the culture that supports them.  For mass shootings, they're almost always committed by someone with some sort of mental imbalance, and so it would probably be more effective to focus efforts on mental health.

What should we do instead of imposing more stringent gun laws?  I feel like the previous paragraph answers that point.  You seek out the root cause and address that, rather than chasing the scapegoat.  I also feel like we need to keep things in perspective, and not use a MOAB to kill a mosquito.  The attack in Las Vegas is tragic, but it is also (thankfully!) very rare.  As I pointed out earlier, you're more likely to be killed by lightning than in an attack like this.  There's an instinct to rush into trying to solve the problem we think we see (guns everywhere), without taking the time to properly evaluate the big picture.

It's funny that the political party that doesn't want any gun regulation...is also the political party that has voted 50,000 times to strip Americans of the mental health care protections they gained under the ACA.  It's almost like they aren't concerned with the symptoms or the cause, but I suppose they have to mumble something that make them sound less like sociopaths.  Too bad we caught on to the whole "sending thoughts and prayers" BS, since that was working well for a while to stall us until we became distracted by the next shiny object.  Now people want something done since a whole heck of a lot of people can relate to seeing a country music concert in Vegas and being a random victim. 

I sense a growing chorus of "but Chicago!" or "hey-gangs, ammirite?" as a dog whistle to imply that it's really only minorities that cause all this gun violence, and we can ignore all this other stuff.  Is that persuasive to anyone here?  Are those the talking points spinning around Fox and Breitbart (can someone go check their "Black Crime" section and report back?)  I...can see who shot people in Vegas.  He wasn't in a gang.  Adam Lanza wasn't in a gang.  Elliot Rogers wasn't in a gang. 

fluffmuffin

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #107 on: October 03, 2017, 02:06:05 PM »
With all that said, I've a couple of questions for the folks shooting down all the gun-control measures. Why does the US have so much higher a rate of gun violence than other developed countries, even adjusted for population? Do you think that the US should do anything to prevent mass shootings and lessen our rates of gun violence?

But most importantly, if none of the gun control measures anyone is proposing would work for reasons XYZ (which I'm willing to believe--I'm no expert!), what do you think we should do instead?
US's high murder rate - This is the question that I feel needs to be discussed first.  I read a while back that the FBI estimates that about 75% of gun murders are tied to gang activity.  I don't know a lot about crime rates in Europe, but gang activity appears to be far worse in the US than in many of the countries with which the US is often compared.  You also need to be careful when choosing countries to compare with, because you can make a pretty chart supporting either side of the argument by careful selection of the countries you compare.

Lessening the rates of gun violence is a very different question from preventing mass shootings.  Gun violence in general is largely driven by gang activity, so I'd suggest focusing efforts on cracking down on gangs and changing the culture that supports them.  For mass shootings, they're almost always committed by someone with some sort of mental imbalance, and so it would probably be more effective to focus efforts on mental health.

What should we do instead of imposing more stringent gun laws?  I feel like the previous paragraph answers that point.  You seek out the root cause and address that, rather than chasing the scapegoat.  I also feel like we need to keep things in perspective, and not use a MOAB to kill a mosquito.  The attack in Las Vegas is tragic, but it is also (thankfully!) very rare.  As I pointed out earlier, you're more likely to be killed by lightning than in an attack like this.  There's an instinct to rush into trying to solve the problem we think we see (guns everywhere), without taking the time to properly evaluate the big picture.

Okay, I totally agree that we should be working on gang violence. That's a huge problem. But it's a problem that results from, and is fed by, so many complex, interlocking factors: racism, disenfranchisement, unequal economic and educational opportunity, the War on Drugs, culture, mass incarceration of Black men, zoning laws, redlining, housing policies, distrust of the police (often with good reason), even things like lack of public transit. That's just off the top of my head. How are we supposed to address every. single. one. of those problems? And then give it a few decades for a cultural shift to take place?

If we're accepting that mental illness is a common theme among mass shooters--but also that the NV shooter would likely have passed a mental health screen, so should still be able to buy a gun--what are the symptoms that we're looking for? If you look at recent mass shooters, they don't all seem to present with the same profile. It's easy to say "Dylann Roof was crazy," but it's a lot harder to figure out exactly what Stephen Paddock, Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Adam Lanza, and Seung-Hui Cho all had in common, much less how to proactively screen for those characteristics. And then without gun control laws, how do you keep someone from getting a gun if they've been identified to be a risk, while they undergo treatment?

To be clear, I think we should be addressing all of these underlying issues. (And also, toxic masculinity! Because if you want a real evidence-based ways to screen for mass shooters, let's keep men from owning guns! Joking, but also not.) But I think--even if there were the political and economic will to tackle every single one of those issues tomorrow--something also has to be done in the short term. There are no quick-fix band-aids for the structural problems underlying all of this. If gun control is off the table, what does that leave us? I'm really trying to understand.

I think we can all agree, though, that the Dickey amendment needs to GO. If guns are so safe and everyone should be able to have as many guns of whatever caliber they want (per your long and slavering list on the last page, zolotiyeruki), the CDC should be able to study the link between guns and public health, and prove it.
« Last Edit: October 03, 2017, 02:08:24 PM by fluffmuffin »

Midwest

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #108 on: October 03, 2017, 02:20:24 PM »
I was thinking the massive LE presence would mean someone could shut down the shooter's guns within a minute or two. It was, after all, a concert with 20k people, and Las Vegas is full of cops.


Would they shut every non-law enforcement gun down?  They had not idea who or where he was for most of that time.

surfhb

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #109 on: October 03, 2017, 02:32:41 PM »
Treat all fire arms like you would the DMV.   Each one is yearly registered and everybody is required to retake training every 5 years or so. 

I abhor weapons of any kind but you are free to own as many as you like.    I used to own 2 MAK-90s and several hand guns....then I grew up and wondered why I kept these worthless piles of steel when they were better used in my bank account.   


GuitarStv

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #110 on: October 03, 2017, 02:34:15 PM »
Do you really not know the difficulty (and manpower costs) of wading through millions of paper (not digital) document held in thousands of locations that law enforcement must undertake to search these records, or are you being purposely dishonest with your response?

You also 'forgot' that 40% of gun sales in the US don't go through a dealer, they're part of those untracked private sales.


#1 - Yes.  Expanded record keeping across the country, and limits to the numbers of guns that can be owned.

#2 - Sorry, I mean GPS not RFID.  I build a lot of devices with tracking chips at work, they're not very expensive and would be pretty easy to set up for tracking.  Even easier with limited numbers of firearms per person.  Tremendous benefit from this . . . stolen weapons, hidden weapons, when police plan to raid a house they can get a good idea of what firearms are going to be in it before hand and will be able to reduce the force used, etc.

#3 - Ah.  Moving goal posts.  First you didn't want to talk about any crime but the one in the OP, now we don't want to talk about the shooting.  I see how it is.
We might be talking about two different things.  Why would anyone need to wade through a pile of paperwork?  I'm thinking about a case where a bad guy does something bad with a gun and gets caught.  The authorities don't have to wade through any large quantity of paperwork, they just follow the chain of custody for that serial number.

  If, of course, the criminal hasn't filed it off, in which case the database does you no good anyway.  Am I misunderstanding what you're saying?

You appear to have no idea how a weapons trace actually takes place in the US.

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-cops-actually-trace-a-gun-2016-8

"There is no national database of guns. We have no centralized record of who owns all the firearms we so vigorously debate, no hard data regarding how many people own them, how many of them are bought or sold, or how many even exist."

"Anytime a cop in any jurisdiction in America wants to connect a gun to its owner, the request for help ends up here, at the National Tracing Center, in a low, flat, boring building that belies its past as an IRS facility, just off state highway 9 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in the eastern panhandle of the state, a town of some 17,000 people, a Walmart, a JCPenney, and various dollar stores sucking the life out of a quaint redbrick downtown. On any given day, agents here are running about 1,500 traces; they do about 370,000 a year."

"“It's a shoestring budget,” says Charlie, who runs the center. “It's not 10,000 agents and a big sophisticated place. It's a bunch of friggin' boxes. All half-ass records. We have about 50 ATF employees. And all the rest are basically the ladies. The ladies that live in West Virginia—and they got a job. There's a huge amount of labor being put into looking through microfilm.”

I want to ask about the microfilm—microfilm?—but it's hard to get a word in. He's already gone three rounds on the whiteboard, scribbling, erasing, illustrating some of the finer points of gun tracing, of which there are many, in large part due to the limitations imposed upon this place. For example, no computer. The National Tracing Center is not allowed to have centralized computer data.

“That's the big no-no,” says Charlie.

That's been a federal law, thanks to the NRA, since 1986: No searchable database of America's gun owners. So people here have to use paper, sort through enormous stacks of forms and record books that gun stores are required to keep and to eventually turn over to the feds when requested. It's kind of like a library in the old days—but without the card catalog. They can use pictures of paper, like microfilm (they recently got the go-ahead to convert the microfilm to PDFs), as long as the pictures of paper are not searchable. You have to flip through and read. No searching by gun owner. No searching by name."

"“You want to see the loading dock?” We head down a corridor lined with boxes. Every corridor in the whole place is lined with boxes, boxes up to the eyeballs. In the loading dock, there's a forklift beeping, bringing in more boxes. “You go, ‘Whoa!’ ” he says. “Okay? Yeah, but a million a month?” Almost 2 million new gun records every month he has to figure out what to do with. Almost 2 million slips of paper that record the sale of a gun—who bought it and where—like a glorified receipt. If you take pictures of the gun records, you can save space. “Two million images! You know, it's 2 million photo shots. I've got to have at least seven machines running 16 hours a day, or otherwise, right? I fall behind. And to fall behind means that instead of 5,000 boxes in process, there's maybe 5,500 tomorrow, you know?"




I didn't "forget" private sales.  I was including them in my response to #1.  Besides, this is another example of a mechanism that is seldom enforced and even more rarely used in solving a crime, and once again, becomes impotent once the serial number is filed off.  It sounds effective in theory, but historically hasn't proven to have much (if any) effect.

If you didn't forget 'em, then you know full well that there is no existing mechanism or way for police to trace the 40% of gun sales in the country that take place this way.




GPS (not RFID):  GPS is a battery hog.  Are the cops going to come knock on gun owners' doors every time someone forgets to charge up their device?  This sounds like a logistical nightmare.  Also, a large number of guns used in crimes have been stolen (or "stolen"), and would likely have this device promptly disabled anyway.

If people can figure out how to charge their cell in the morning, I think they can figure out how to charge their gun too.  If not . . . they may well be too stupid to responsibly own a gun, so this seems like a win-win really.

Will there be logistical challenges?  Sure.  It might even make it slightly more little inconvenient to own a weapon.  There will be a greater need for additional policing, especially at implementation.  It will make things much safer though.


WRT limiting the total number of guns a person can own, let's explore a bit more.  Sure, a person with a pistol and a rifle is potentially more dangerous than someone with only one of them.  But the guy with 50 guns isn't going to pose much more of a threat to the public than the guy with 10.  And how do you set the limit?  I can easily come up with a list of 10 guns I'd be interested in owning, without it seeming outlandish.  A .22 rifle for plinking, a compact concealed carry pistol, a full-size pistol for the night stand, a shotgun for shooting clay pigeons, an AR-15, an M1 Garand (just because they're really cool), a carry pistol for DW, a bolt-action 30-06 or .308 for longer-range shooting, a smaller .22 bolt-action rifle for the kids to learn on, and a 20-gauge shotgun for the kids as well.  How would such a limit work on households with multiple adults?  Do you limit it by type of weapon?

How about limiting it to two firearms per adult?  One per hand.  You can own the guns you really want, but not the whole armory.

waltworks

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #111 on: October 03, 2017, 02:48:41 PM »
I was thinking the massive LE presence would mean someone could shut down the shooter's guns within a minute or two. It was, after all, a concert with 20k people, and Las Vegas is full of cops.


Would they shut every non-law enforcement gun down?  They had not idea who or where he was for most of that time.

Sure, why not? Shutting down every gun in a 5 mile radius would have been a great solution. Or you could have a code that shuts down non-LE guns but leaves the LE guns operating. That's easy.

-W

dandarc

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #112 on: October 03, 2017, 02:54:07 PM »
I was thinking the massive LE presence would mean someone could shut down the shooter's guns within a minute or two. It was, after all, a concert with 20k people, and Las Vegas is full of cops.


Would they shut every non-law enforcement gun down?  They had not idea who or where he was for most of that time.

Sure, why not? Shutting down every gun in a 5 mile radius would have been a great solution. Or you could have a code that shuts down non-LE guns but leaves the LE guns operating. That's easy.

-W
I see a huge market for "antique" guns in this alternate reality.

Midwest

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #113 on: October 03, 2017, 03:00:26 PM »
I was thinking the massive LE presence would mean someone could shut down the shooter's guns within a minute or two. It was, after all, a concert with 20k people, and Las Vegas is full of cops.


Would they shut every non-law enforcement gun down?  They had not idea who or where he was for most of that time.

Sure, why not? Shutting down every gun in a 5 mile radius would have been a great solution. Or you could have a code that shuts down non-LE guns but leaves the LE guns operating. That's easy.

-W
I see a huge market for "antique" guns in this alternate reality.

or gun shaped faraday cages. That might be a problem if a law abiding citizen were defending themselves within the 5 mile radius.
« Last Edit: October 03, 2017, 03:06:10 PM by Midwest »

Travis

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #114 on: October 03, 2017, 03:03:39 PM »
I was thinking the massive LE presence would mean someone could shut down the shooter's guns within a minute or two. It was, after all, a concert with 20k people, and Las Vegas is full of cops.


Would they shut every non-law enforcement gun down?  They had not idea who or where he was for most of that time.

Sure, why not? Shutting down every gun in a 5 mile radius would have been a great solution. Or you could have a code that shuts down non-LE guns but leaves the LE guns operating. That's easy.

-W
I see a huge market for "antique" guns in this alternate reality.

If revolvers made a comeback, then the folks who want smaller magazines would win too. They're also difficult to reload under stress.

I saw a demo where a 92F was enabled/disabled by a proximity signal sent to the gun through a ring around the shooter's finger, but they said it couldn't be adapter to revolvers. That was a decade ago though.  Anyone have an update to share?

zolotiyeruki

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #115 on: October 03, 2017, 03:09:51 PM »
We can argue all we want about the definition of mass shooting (and quite frankly I'm horrified if your definition is 13 or more victims as suggested by your examples - that just shows how numbed and indifferent we have all become..)

Mass shootings by police, or gang related murders quite frankly shouldn't be happening either- nor can they be justified or dismissed in such sweeping terms. What happened to incapacitating suspects instead of aiming for the heart or head? What are the statistics of correlation between number of gang members and gun ownership? Is it just possible that guns CREATE gangs? Again the evidence shows that there's a correlation between those shootings and gun ownership proportional to population..
I'm not arguing that you have to accept my (arbitrary and personal) definition of mass shooting, it's simply the picture that comes to mind when I hear the term.

When I referred to police-involved shootings, I'm talking about incidents where, for example, there are two criminals and a crowd of police in a gun fight.  If the two criminals get shot and two officers also get injured, it gets included as a "mass shooting," when it's really a very different type of event than what we saw in Las Vegas.  The same goes for inter-gang violence--possibly many casualties, but again, a very different type of event than Las Vegas. I guess that if you're coming from the pro-gun-control side, it's easier to conflate the three, but if you're looking at the root-cause side, they're very different.

I further do not wish to simply dismiss gang violence, either.  Instead, I'm saying that rather than rush to enact laws which will only affect law-abiding citizens and will not affect crime at all, we should instead focus on resolving the problems that lead to gang activity.

Actually, there's a slight negative correlation between gun ownership and gun murders in the US.  The positive correlation is only relevant to suicide-by-gun (which accounts for 2/3 to 3/4 of all gun deaths).

Okay, I totally agree that we should be working on gang violence. That's a huge problem. But it's a problem that results from, and is fed by, so many complex, interlocking factors: racism, disenfranchisement, unequal economic and educational opportunity, the War on Drugs, culture, mass incarceration of Black men, zoning laws, redlining, housing policies, distrust of the police (often with good reason), even things like lack of public transit. That's just off the top of my head. How are we supposed to address every. single. one. of those problems? And then give it a few decades for a cultural shift to take place?

If we're accepting that mental illness is a common theme among mass shooters--but also that the NV shooter would likely have passed a mental health screen, so should still be able to buy a gun--what are the symptoms that we're looking for? If you look at recent mass shooters, they don't all seem to present with the same profile. It's easy to say "Dylann Roof was crazy," but it's a lot harder to figure out exactly what Stephen Paddock, Dylann Roof, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Adam Lanza, and Seung-Hui Cho all had in common, much less how to proactively screen for those characteristics. And then without gun control laws, how do you keep someone from getting a gun if they've been identified to be a risk, while they undergo treatment?

To be clear, I think we should be addressing all of these underlying issues. (And also, toxic masculinity! Because if you want a real evidence-based ways to screen for mass shooters, let's keep men from owning guns! Joking, but also not.) But I think--even if there were the political and economic will to tackle every single one of those issues tomorrow--something also has to be done in the short term. There are no quick-fix band-aids for the structural problems underlying all of this. If gun control is off the table, what does that leave us? I'm really trying to understand.

I think we can all agree, though, that the Dickey amendment needs to GO. If guns are so safe and everyone should be able to have as many guns of whatever caliber they want (per your long and slavering list on the last page, zolotiyeruki), the CDC should be able to study the link between guns and public health, and prove it.
I like your use of the phrase "long and slavering list." :)

Every single one of those problems?  Sure, why not?  Collectively, yes, it's intimidating, and some individual problems (like racism) are difficult to solve on their own.  But many of those are things we (as a society) can work on.  Some of those issues I might disagree on, or I'm not well-enough-informed (mass incarceration?  We're not rounding up all the black men in an area, are we?  If they're committing crimes, are you proposing that we *not* punish them?) to form an opinion.  You're right that there's no quick fix.

I'm not super-informed on the Dickey amendment, although it seems like such research would be more in the DoJ's wheelhouse, maybe?  I don't have a strong opinion on it, but I can certainly understand the resistance from gun owners' points of view.  The demographics of federal government employees skews VERY heavily to the left, and there's a history (or at least a perception of it) of government studies being massaged/edited/redacted (or even in some cases, withheld entirely) in order to support a certain political goal.  So there's an understandable (if not completely justified) reluctance to allow any potential for encroachment.

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #116 on: October 03, 2017, 03:23:19 PM »
The simple fact of the matter is that the only reason we don't have gun control is because, as a society, we do not want it. We can (and have, many times) amended the constitution to override previous amendments. Many other countries have successfully had MANDATORY gun buybacks and successfully reduced gun violence (Australia comes to mind in the 90s). America is a deeply violent society. Unless we change that, we will continue to have lots of guns and lots of violence. It saddens me that we cannot be better than this.

zolotiyeruki

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #117 on: October 03, 2017, 03:25:57 PM »
You appear to have no idea how a weapons trace actually takes place in the US.

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-how-cops-actually-trace-a-gun-2016-8
Huh. Learn something new every day. 
Quote
I didn't "forget" private sales.  I was including them in my response to #1.  Besides, this is another example of a mechanism that is seldom enforced and even more rarely used in solving a crime, and once again, becomes impotent once the serial number is filed off.  It sounds effective in theory, but historically hasn't proven to have much (if any) effect.

If you didn't forget 'em, then you know full well that there is no existing mechanism or way for police to trace the 40% of gun sales in the country that take place this way.
I get the feeling my words aren't getting through.  Some states, like IL where I live, require individuals to maintain a record of sale if they sell a firearm to another individual for 10 years, so that police *can* trace those 40% of sales if needed.  Those records are rarely if ever used.

Quote

GPS (not RFID):  GPS is a battery hog.  Are the cops going to come knock on gun owners' doors every time someone forgets to charge up their device?  This sounds like a logistical nightmare.  Also, a large number of guns used in crimes have been stolen (or "stolen"), and would likely have this device promptly disabled anyway.

If people can figure out how to charge their cell in the morning, I think they can figure out how to charge their gun too.  If not . . . they may well be too stupid to responsibly own a gun, so this seems like a win-win really.

Will there be logistical challenges?  Sure.  It might even make it slightly more little inconvenient to own a weapon.  There will be a greater need for additional policing, especially at implementation.  It will make things much safer though.
Will it really make things much safer, though?  Would it have prevented the Las Vegas shooting?  I doubt it.  Drive 5 minutes out of town, cut the wires on the transponders, drive back into town, and you've now got a bunch of rifles they don't know are there.  Sure, the police know that your guns aren't pinging any more, but for all they know, you're out in the desert, out of cell phone range, punching holes in paper.  "Slightly more inconvenient"?  Daily charging for a cell phone that you use daily is one thing.  Requiring daily charging for a handgun that you hope to never use but keep just in case is entirely different.  Also, it's basically a "boy who cried wolf" scenario.

Quote
WRT limiting the total number of guns a person can own, let's explore a bit more.  Sure, a person with a pistol and a rifle is potentially more dangerous than someone with only one of them.  But the guy with 50 guns isn't going to pose much more of a threat to the public than the guy with 10.  And how do you set the limit?  I can easily come up with a list of 10 guns I'd be interested in owning, without it seeming outlandish.  A .22 rifle for plinking, a compact concealed carry pistol, a full-size pistol for the night stand, a shotgun for shooting clay pigeons, an AR-15, an M1 Garand (just because they're really cool), a carry pistol for DW, a bolt-action 30-06 or .308 for longer-range shooting, a smaller .22 bolt-action rifle for the kids to learn on, and a 20-gauge shotgun for the kids as well.  How would such a limit work on households with multiple adults?  Do you limit it by type of weapon?

How about limiting it to two firearms per adult?  One per hand.  You can own the guns you really want, but not the whole armory.
I'm sorry, but that's ridiculous.

zolotiyeruki

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #118 on: October 03, 2017, 03:34:37 PM »
America is a deeply violent society. Unless we change that, we will continue to have lots of guns and lots of violence. It saddens me that we cannot be better than this.
I take issue with this statement.  We don't have hard-and-fast numbers, but there are an estimated 300 million guns in the US (some estimates put it at twice that number), and somewhere between 60 and 100 million gun owners.  There seems a constant fixation on the One Guy who does something horrific, as if he is representative of our entire society, while we ignore the other 59,999,999 gun owners who went about their lives like every other day, without causing any problems.

I also take issue the implication that American culture is homogeneous, and that the actions of one subculture are reflective of every other subculture.  Is there a culture of violence in some places or among some groups?  Absolutely, whether it's gangs in Chicago or the Alt-right or Antifa or MS-13.

dycker1978

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #119 on: October 03, 2017, 03:46:41 PM »
America is a deeply violent society. Unless we change that, we will continue to have lots of guns and lots of violence. It saddens me that we cannot be better than this.
I take issue with this statement.  We don't have hard-and-fast numbers, but there are an estimated 300 million guns in the US (some estimates put it at twice that number), and somewhere between 60 and 100 million gun owners.  There seems a constant fixation on the One Guy who does something horrific, as if he is representative of our entire society, while we ignore the other 59,999,999 gun owners who went about their lives like every other day, without causing any problems.

I also take issue the implication that American culture is homogeneous, and that the actions of one subculture are reflective of every other subculture.  Is there a culture of violence in some places or among some groups?  Absolutely, whether it's gangs in Chicago or the Alt-right or Antifa or MS-13.
America is a deeply violent society.  I am not even just talking guns here.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/5565946


A Definite Beta Guy

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #120 on: October 03, 2017, 03:57:52 PM »
America is a deeply violent society. Unless we change that, we will continue to have lots of guns and lots of violence. It saddens me that we cannot be better than this.
I take issue with this statement.  We don't have hard-and-fast numbers, but there are an estimated 300 million guns in the US (some estimates put it at twice that number), and somewhere between 60 and 100 million gun owners.  There seems a constant fixation on the One Guy who does something horrific, as if he is representative of our entire society, while we ignore the other 59,999,999 gun owners who went about their lives like every other day, without causing any problems.

I also take issue the implication that American culture is homogeneous, and that the actions of one subculture are reflective of every other subculture.  Is there a culture of violence in some places or among some groups?  Absolutely, whether it's gangs in Chicago or the Alt-right or Antifa or MS-13.
America is a deeply violent society.  I am not even just talking guns here.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/5565946
How does this demonstrate a violent society, as it pertains to increased gun crime?

surfhb

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #121 on: October 03, 2017, 04:14:40 PM »
The simple fact of the matter is that the only reason we don't have gun control is because, as a society, we do not want it. We can (and have, many times) amended the constitution to override previous amendments. Many other countries have successfully had MANDATORY gun buybacks and successfully reduced gun violence (Australia comes to mind in the 90s). America is a deeply violent society. Unless we change that, we will continue to have lots of guns and lots of violence. It saddens me that we cannot be better than this.

Hmmmm.   I'll be willing to bet most want more gun control in this country.   The problem is we wont see it with the GOP in control of any part of congress/and or the White House for an expanded period of time. 

dycker1978

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #122 on: October 03, 2017, 04:17:41 PM »
America is a deeply violent society. Unless we change that, we will continue to have lots of guns and lots of violence. It saddens me that we cannot be better than this.
I take issue with this statement.  We don't have hard-and-fast numbers, but there are an estimated 300 million guns in the US (some estimates put it at twice that number), and somewhere between 60 and 100 million gun owners.  There seems a constant fixation on the One Guy who does something horrific, as if he is representative of our entire society, while we ignore the other 59,999,999 gun owners who went about their lives like every other day, without causing any problems.

I also take issue the implication that American culture is homogeneous, and that the actions of one subculture are reflective of every other subculture.  Is there a culture of violence in some places or among some groups?  Absolutely, whether it's gangs in Chicago or the Alt-right or Antifa or MS-13.
America is a deeply violent society.  I am not even just talking guns here.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/5565946
How does this demonstrate a violent society, as it pertains to increased gun crime?

Who said it was?  This is an indication of how violent the USA is.   

accolay

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #123 on: October 03, 2017, 04:21:48 PM »
I rest my case:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/02/las-vegas-gun-control-caleb-keeter-josh-abbott-band
"Guitarist says Las Vegas concert attack changed his mind on gun control"
Yay, by all means let's make sweeping legislative changes based on anecdotal experiences!  That sounds like a sure winner!

You absolutely missed the point of my comment. What I said first was: "those against gun control will have to be personally involved in such tragedy before something is done." Did you even read the article?

Pointing out that anecdotal evidence seems to be shaping how we're going to deal with our opioid problem in the US. Because lots of people now have had personal experience with that tragedy. Before it just used to be a problem with someone else.

But maybe I'm wrong and the takeaway from the majority of the people in that Las Vegas crowd were that they should all have guns and keep them on us at all times, just in case.

I don't understand what you're advocating for here besides "there's nothing we can do." What I read from your comments is you shrugging your shoulders saying "oh well, another day in America."

That's not good enough for me.

Chesleygirl

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #124 on: October 03, 2017, 04:55:57 PM »
Does our constitutional right to bear arms,  mean we as citizens can carry any kind of weapon we want to? Even nukes? I'm asking as a serious question.

I have a relative who is very much into pro-gun politics, and she thinks children should be able to tote guns to school. Even children as young as age 5. She says it is their constitutional right to bear arms. She is also good friends with someone who ran for for a very high office in our nation recently.

So I think we have a problem here.
« Last Edit: October 03, 2017, 04:58:09 PM by Chesleygirl »

omachi

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #125 on: October 03, 2017, 05:07:18 PM »
Does our constitutional right to bear arms,  mean we as citizens can carry any kind of weapon we want to? Even nukes? I'm asking as a serious question.

I have a relative who is very much into pro-gun politics, and she thinks children should be able to tote guns to school. Even children as young as age 5. She says it is their constitutional right to bear arms. She is also good friends with someone who ran for for a very high office in our nation recently.

So I think we have a problem here.
Nukes, probably not, from a non-proliferation angle. We have treaties that limit those. Can't see how citizens get around that.

There were non-government privateers armed with cannon in revolutionary times. So it seems likely the founders weren't limiting the arms mentioned in the second amendment to the blunderbuss. I don't know if a private citizen could outfit their ship with 20 heavy cannon these days, but I imagine it would be fun to try.

As for kids with guns, that's patently ridiculous. Minors often have a different set of rules, and with good reason. It's every citizen's right to vote, too, but we keep them from doing so until they're 18. I can't imagine anybody in their right mind not laughing out of the room a person suggesting 5 year-olds should be armed. That was your reaction when you heard this, right?

Chesleygirl

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #126 on: October 03, 2017, 05:15:43 PM »
Does our constitutional right to bear arms,  mean we as citizens can carry any kind of weapon we want to? Even nukes? I'm asking as a serious question.

I have a relative who is very much into pro-gun politics, and she thinks children should be able to tote guns to school. Even children as young as age 5. She says it is their constitutional right to bear arms. She is also good friends with someone who ran for for a very high office in our nation recently.

So I think we have a problem here.
Nukes, probably not, from a non-proliferation angle. We have treaties that limit those. Can't see how citizens get around that.

There were non-government privateers armed with cannon in revolutionary times. So it seems likely the founders weren't limiting the arms mentioned in the second amendment to the blunderbuss. I don't know if a private citizen could outfit their ship with 20 heavy cannon these days, but I imagine it would be fun to try.

As for kids with guns, that's patently ridiculous. Minors often have a different set of rules, and with good reason. It's every citizen's right to vote, too, but we keep them from doing so until they're 18. I can't imagine anybody in their right mind not laughing out of the room a person suggesting 5 year-olds should be armed. That was your reaction when you heard this, right?

There are people who seriously believe 5 year olds should be able to tote loaded rifles to school with them. I'd laugh about it, but it makes me scared and so it's not so funny any more. And the US constitution doesn't state that minors "can't" be armed. So there is always the risk that they can do so.


Glenstache

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #127 on: October 03, 2017, 05:17:46 PM »
I mean, what could go wrong if we armed kids with automatic weapons, even under highly controlled environments?
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/us/arizona-firing-range-instructor-killed-by-girl-9-in-accident.html

waltworks

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #128 on: October 03, 2017, 05:19:19 PM »
I see a huge market for "antique" guns in this alternate reality.

I agree, and that's probably the biggest drawback. You'd have to either confiscate existing guns (somehow I don't think the people who own them would be too happy, even if they got to trade them in for a new smart model) or else wait for the existing non-smart guns to wear out. That would be... a long time.

In the meantime, though, you could stop non-smart guns from being manufactured, and maybe in 50 or 100 years, you'd have helped solve the problem.

I guess my point is that the only viable solution is probably going to have to involve something like that. It's either that, or just admit that we can't do anything.

-W

Travis

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #129 on: October 03, 2017, 05:21:21 PM »
Does our constitutional right to bear arms,  mean we as citizens can carry any kind of weapon we want to? Even nukes? I'm asking as a serious question.

I have a relative who is very much into pro-gun politics, and she thinks children should be able to tote guns to school. Even children as young as age 5. She says it is their constitutional right to bear arms. She is also good friends with someone who ran for for a very high office in our nation recently.

So I think we have a problem here.

There are weapons that are banned from the hands of private citizens, but I can't speak to what the legal justification is vice the small arms that we're allowed to own.  Full-auto assault rifles and belt-fed machine guns have been on the banned list for a long time.  You can buy an old tank, but it can't be functional as a weapon.  If I recall correctly the Supreme Court turned down a handgun ban in D.C. or somewhere stating that was too deep of a gun ban which would essentially mean the ability to ban every firearm in between.  Wherever the legal gray area is between heavy machine gun and pistol is where you see gun legislation occur.

And there's plenty of debate as to what constitutional rights minors have in the first place.

RetiredAt63

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #130 on: October 03, 2017, 05:22:26 PM »
Based on Canadian data, the most dangerous gun owner I can encounter is a male I am close to.  When I think of most local homicides, almost all have been domestic.  As in, he shot his ex-girlfriend or ex-wife.  Even though I worked in Montreal for the Concordia, Ecole Polytechnique and Dawson shootings, and lived near Ottawa for the Parliament Hill shootings.  And even though there is gang violence in Montreal and Ottawa (hey there was a Hell's Angels affiliate camp-out just outside Ottawa a while ago).

Canadians have lots of guns (long guns are legal, hand guns are very difficult to have legally, gangs love them).

Since Canada is right next door to the US and we have similar settlement patterns, a lot of Americans seem to think we must be very much like them.  Nope.  Here is the Canadian picture from a few years ago. 

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2013001/article/11882-eng.htm

PS  There are things we don't like about our governments (federal and provincial), but we seem to have managed to not have the deep distrust of them that Americans have.  That may also be a factor (?).

zolotiyeruki

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #131 on: October 03, 2017, 05:59:49 PM »
The simple fact of the matter is that the only reason we don't have gun control is because, as a society, we do not want it. We can (and have, many times) amended the constitution to override previous amendments. Many other countries have successfully had MANDATORY gun buybacks and successfully reduced gun violence (Australia comes to mind in the 90s). America is a deeply violent society. Unless we change that, we will continue to have lots of guns and lots of violence. It saddens me that we cannot be better than this.

Hmmmm.   I'll be willing to bet most want more gun control in this country.   The problem is we wont see it with the GOP in control of any part of congress/and or the White House for an expanded period of time.
Interesting that you bring up that point. It's true that when you ask a very generic question about whether gun laws should be improved, you get a majority.  But as we've seen in this thread, once you get down into specific proposals, the support for increased gun control very rapidly erodes.

You absolutely missed the point of my comment. What I said first was: "those against gun control will have to be personally involved in such tragedy before something is done." Did you even read the article?

...

But maybe I'm wrong and the takeaway from the majority of the people in that Las Vegas crowd were that they should all have guns and keep them on us at all times, just in case.

I don't understand what you're advocating for here besides "there's nothing we can do." What I read from your comments is you shrugging your shoulders saying "oh well, another day in America."

That's not good enough for me.
I did read the article, actually.  But there's an implicit assumption there that I don't think is valid:  that personal exposure to gun violence will lead people to become anti-gun.  I don't know if that's statistically true or false.

You're stating a false choice in your "But maybe I'm wrong" statement.  This event is a black swan, an extremely rare and unique occurrence in nearly every respect, from the profile of the shooter to the level of planning to the type of weapons used to the number of victims.  It's also unusual in the fact that the victims, even if armed, could not have fought back, and nobody (at least that I've heard) is arguing that they could have, which also makes it a straw man argument. :)

I haven't stated any specific policy proposals, simply because I don't have a solution.  But to be frank, neither does anyone else, short of full-on repeal of the 2nd amendment and total confiscation. 

Chesleygirl

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #132 on: October 03, 2017, 06:08:05 PM »
I mean, what could go wrong if we armed kids with automatic weapons, even under highly controlled environments?
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/28/us/arizona-firing-range-instructor-killed-by-girl-9-in-accident.html

The gun advocates will  just keep saying it's the person's right to own a gun no matter what, because the US constitution says it is. So even a child should be able to own a gun. They will also say knives and other weapons are "just as dangerous" as guns are. They will also say it's the person's fault, not the weapon's fault. Those are some of their standard arguments.

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #133 on: October 03, 2017, 06:33:56 PM »
those against gun control will have to be personally involved in such tragedy before something is done.
I rest my case:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/02/las-vegas-gun-control-caleb-keeter-josh-abbott-band
"Guitarist says Las Vegas concert attack changed his mind on gun control"
I think Jim Wright had a reasonable take on this guy's change of heart:
https://www.facebook.com/Stonekettle/posts/1470848952950503

That said, I think that having people with public exposure openly question existing dogma on gun control and change their mind is very useful because it normalizes that it is okay for people to question and change their mind (and this can go both ways on this issue, to be sure).

omachi

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #134 on: October 03, 2017, 07:37:43 PM »
Does our constitutional right to bear arms,  mean we as citizens can carry any kind of weapon we want to? Even nukes? I'm asking as a serious question.

I have a relative who is very much into pro-gun politics, and she thinks children should be able to tote guns to school. Even children as young as age 5. She says it is their constitutional right to bear arms. She is also good friends with someone who ran for for a very high office in our nation recently.

So I think we have a problem here.
Nukes, probably not, from a non-proliferation angle. We have treaties that limit those. Can't see how citizens get around that.

There were non-government privateers armed with cannon in revolutionary times. So it seems likely the founders weren't limiting the arms mentioned in the second amendment to the blunderbuss. I don't know if a private citizen could outfit their ship with 20 heavy cannon these days, but I imagine it would be fun to try.

As for kids with guns, that's patently ridiculous. Minors often have a different set of rules, and with good reason. It's every citizen's right to vote, too, but we keep them from doing so until they're 18. I can't imagine anybody in their right mind not laughing out of the room a person suggesting 5 year-olds should be armed. That was your reaction when you heard this, right?

There are people who seriously believe 5 year olds should be able to tote loaded rifles to school with them. I'd laugh about it, but it makes me scared and so it's not so funny any more. And the US constitution doesn't state that minors "can't" be armed. So there is always the risk that they can do so.

You don't laugh at these people because it's funny. You laugh at them because you want to belittle the position. If everyone did so, there might be a chance they would reconsider such an insane position. That people don't, or at least don't challenge the position as crazy gives it a sort of Kafka-esque legitimacy in their mind.

Chesleygirl

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #135 on: October 03, 2017, 08:28:02 PM »
I think if our country did see 5 year olds toting guns to school on a regular basis and the inevitable massive numbers of deaths that would result from this craziness, they'd want to rewrite the US constitution to permanently remove "right to bear arms", or we'd see record numbers of Americans fleeing the country to get out as fast as they could.

But I'm not joking around when I say, I know people who want their young kids to be able to carry loaded guns around.

Kris

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #136 on: October 03, 2017, 08:34:45 PM »
I think if our country did see 5 year olds toting guns to school on a regular basis and the inevitable massive numbers of deaths that would result from this craziness, they'd want to rewrite the US constitution to permanently remove "right to bear arms", or we'd see record numbers of Americans fleeing the country to get out as fast as they could.

But I'm not joking around when I say, I know people who want their young kids to be able to carry loaded guns around.

Nah. The NRA would just put out some video ads showing five year-olds prepping to protect themselves and their families against liberals, shoot some money to key Congressional Republicans, and presto — untapped revenue source!

Hell, Don Jr. has already auditioned as spokesmodel.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/1/14/1620367/-While-We-Watched-His-Dad-Trump-Jr-Praised-Gun-Silencers-For-Getting-Little-Kids-In-The-Game

Radagast

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #137 on: October 03, 2017, 10:58:47 PM »
How about this for a gun control method? Anyone can own a gun if they find four people who will testify in writing that they are familiar with the character, situation, and training of the would-be gun owner, and that the person is able to responsibly own a firearm. It would be take the form of a license.
Each citizen could make one recommendation per year. People who had been convicted of a felony could not recommend firearm licensure until seven years after the end of any sentence or penalty, two years after a misdemeanor. If a person you recommended commits a crime with a gun, you may not recommend anyone else from the date they are charged until seven years after their date of conviction. This would force people to put some consideration into who they recommend. You would have to show your license to posses or purchase a firearm and possibly certain accessories (and maybe ammunition depending on how restrictive you wanted to be). Existing restrictions regarding felons, domestic violence, and the like would remain intact.

It sounds dumb, but it might be effective. Could the Las Vegas guy have found four people willing to testify for him? A standoffish guy with a foreign wife (only citizens would be able to recommend) who rarely talked with his family? Maybe he could have, since he could have qualified decades ago. Either way, this method could disqualify people who are obviously incompetent, impatient, unstable, or who mostly associate with criminals, without the need for psychologists, tests, or nuanced regulations. It would hold society accountable to gun owners, and gun owners accountable to society. At the same time it would be populist in nature and similar to other populist institutions, juries for example.

It could be easily made more or less strict. For example perhaps breech loaders, muzzle loaders, or bolt action guns 42 inches or longer could be excluded. Alternately, perhaps it would make sense that concealable weapons need a second license which requires a standard license, a four year trial period after receiving the standard license, plus four additional signatures from licensed gun owners (who themselves already received four signatures from any citizen) with a repeat of the same restrictions as above. Perhaps guns that have or can easily be modified to have a high and sustainable rate of fire could be treated similarly. This could allow all the uninfringed stuff and still add a modicum of non-centralized regulation.

This is a method that many states use to license engineers.

nnls

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #138 on: October 03, 2017, 11:31:13 PM »
How about this for a gun control method? Anyone can own a gun if they find four people who will testify in writing that they are familiar with the character, situation, and training of the would-be gun owner, and that the person is able to responsibly own a firearm. It would be take the form of a license.
Each citizen could make one recommendation per year. People who had been convicted of a felony could not recommend firearm licensure until seven years after the end of any sentence or penalty, two years after a misdemeanor. If a person you recommended commits a crime with a gun, you may not recommend anyone else from the date they are charged until seven years after their date of conviction. This would force people to put some consideration into who they recommend. You would have to show your license to posses or purchase a firearm and possibly certain accessories (and maybe ammunition depending on how restrictive you wanted to be). Existing restrictions regarding felons, domestic violence, and the like would remain intact.

It sounds dumb, but it might be effective. Could the Las Vegas guy have found four people willing to testify for him? A standoffish guy with a foreign wife (only citizens would be able to recommend) who rarely talked with his family? Maybe he could have, since he could have qualified decades ago. Either way, this method could disqualify people who are obviously incompetent, impatient, unstable, or who mostly associate with criminals, without the need for psychologists, tests, or nuanced regulations. It would hold society accountable to gun owners, and gun owners accountable to society. At the same time it would be populist in nature and similar to other populist institutions, juries for example.

It could be easily made more or less strict. For example perhaps breech loaders, muzzle loaders, or bolt action guns 42 inches or longer could be excluded. Alternately, perhaps it would make sense that concealable weapons need a second license which requires a standard license, a four year trial period after receiving the standard license, plus four additional signatures from licensed gun owners (who themselves already received four signatures from any citizen) with a repeat of the same restrictions as above. Perhaps guns that have or can easily be modified to have a high and sustainable rate of fire could be treated similarly. This could allow all the uninfringed stuff and still add a modicum of non-centralized regulation.

This is a method that many states use to license engineers.

and maybe a restriction on the number of guns each person could legally own, with a register of this and if those guns are used in a  crime(and you haven't reported them missing) then you lose your gun licence.

I know criminals would still have guns and not follow the law, but when there are gun restrictions it is harder for criminals to get guns.

accolay

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #139 on: October 03, 2017, 11:38:09 PM »
I haven't stated any specific policy proposals, simply because I don't have a solution. 

Yeah, we know.

GuitarStv

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #140 on: October 04, 2017, 06:20:39 AM »
I see a huge market for "antique" guns in this alternate reality.

I agree, and that's probably the biggest drawback. You'd have to either confiscate existing guns (somehow I don't think the people who own them would be too happy, even if they got to trade them in for a new smart model) or else wait for the existing non-smart guns to wear out. That would be... a long time.

In the meantime, though, you could stop non-smart guns from being manufactured, and maybe in 50 or 100 years, you'd have helped solve the problem.

I guess my point is that the only viable solution is probably going to have to involve something like that. It's either that, or just admit that we can't do don't really want to do anything.

-W

Fixed that for you.

There's plenty that can be done.  People who like owning guns would prefer to keep things they way they are.  The deaths and mass murders are just an acceptable loss in their eyes.  It's why they never have any solutions for the problem (only complaints about things proposed) . . . because they know any solution will make their ability to own, use, and buy a gun slightly more difficult.  And in the end, lives simply aren't worth that kind of hassle.

A Definite Beta Guy

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #141 on: October 04, 2017, 07:15:48 AM »
People who like owning guns do not trust gun control advocates. The reason they do not want a searchable database or national registry is because they believe it will be used to confiscate guns.

Given that the median position among gun control advocates in this very thread is that we need smart guns, GPS chips in all guns, and a full ban of semi-autos, which is not effective without seizing a large portion of the 300 million guns already in the air, that's not at all unreasonable.

I'm not really a gun guy at all, but I'm definitely on the side of not restricting fundamental American rights because of an elevated homicide rate.

GuitarStv

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #142 on: October 04, 2017, 07:27:53 AM »
I'm definitely on the side of not restricting fundamental American rights because of an elevated homicide rate.

Yeah, that's exactly what I was typing about.

Quote
And in the end, lives simply aren't worth that kind of hassle.

A Definite Beta Guy

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #143 on: October 04, 2017, 07:45:23 AM »
If people don't like the trade-off, they can always try to pass a Constitutional amendment. Or they can try to insert it in the Article V convention that we're probably going to have this century at the rate we're going (assuming we don't just choose to dissolve the Republic entirely).

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scottish

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #145 on: October 04, 2017, 08:05:36 AM »
The US is way too far gone for gun control to help.    The only way the US is going to get gun violence under control is to confiscate and destroy all firearms in civilian hands.     Once they're all gone (a multi-year project if I ever heard of one), then you can start with modern gun regulation.

We all know this isn't ever going to happen.

I'm not sure it should, either.   The American ethos of the lone warrior defending his family/ranch/unit/comrades is actually very powerful.   As long as the US is willing to put up with the gun violence, I think it can be a net force for good in the world.    We can't have the government protecting us from everything.   Just look at child rearing expectations today.  A nanny government is a dismal future if I ever heard of one.

You would be better to focus on things that will make a difference.    Dealing with ghettos and urban poverty.   Better mental health care (along with better health care in general.)   Eliminating racism.

Davnasty

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #146 on: October 04, 2017, 08:08:02 AM »
If people don't like the trade-off, they can always try to pass a Constitutional amendment. Or they can try to insert it in the Article V convention that we're probably going to have this century at the rate we're going (assuming we don't just choose to dissolve the Republic entirely).
This isn't a debate about what our lawmakers are going to do, it's about what they should do. We want your opinion and your defense of that position.

Kris

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #147 on: October 04, 2017, 08:14:27 AM »
The US is way too far gone for gun control to help.    The only way the US is going to get gun violence under control is to confiscate and destroy all firearms in civilian hands.     Once they're all gone (a multi-year project if I ever heard of one), then you can start with modern gun regulation.

We all know this isn't ever going to happen.

I'm not sure it should, either.   The American ethos of the lone warrior defending his family/ranch/unit/comrades is actually very powerful.   As long as the US is willing to put up with the gun violence, I think it can be a net force for good in the world.    We can't have the government protecting us from everything.   Just look at child rearing expectations today.  A nanny government is a dismal future if I ever heard of one.

You would be better to focus on things that will make a difference.    Dealing with ghettos and urban poverty.   Better mental health care (along with better health care in general.)   Eliminating racism.

I agree that we're too far gone. The NRA and the Republican lawmakers in their pockets get rich off this shit. They have a great Rambo narrative that people who thrive on the myth of the lone warrior eat up like it's mother's milk. And they've conveniently folded into this narrative that lefties are the enemy, so any attempt to discuss solutions on their part is just seen as at best clueless and at worst anti-American.

The ONLY place reform can come from now is from the right. In the form of changing campaign financing and donations, changing the stranglehold of lobby groups on our policies, rolling back Citizens United, lifting the CDC ban on gun violence research that the Republicans put in place, and dealing with the issues that Scottish pointed to above. And none of those things will ever happen as long as Republicans are in control. Which they will be for the foreseeable future, because of gerrymandering and a Supreme Court that will only lean more rightward as the next justice retires or dies and Trump replaces them with someone even worse than Gorsuch.

We're done here, kids. Until the GOP starts to wake up and get a conscience. Which apparently it takes a literal death sentence to happen.

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/us_politics/2017/10/john_mccain_urges_supreme_court_to_return_control_of_our_elections_to_the

So try to make it through as best you can.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2017, 08:30:28 AM by Kris »

FLBiker

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #148 on: October 04, 2017, 08:29:14 AM »
For us, the questions raised by events like this have less to do with gun control than with timing.  How late is too late to leave? 

Right now we've got good gigs, but this culture is toxic and growing increasingly moreso.  I worked overseas from 1999 to 2007 and never really intended to come back.  I left (in 1999) because of frustration with the direction in which we seemed to be headed (relentlessly pro-consumerism, pro-corporate, bully foreign policy, no social safety net, etc.) and it hasn't gotten better.  Not sure if this will be the particular tipping point, but last night DW asked me if I'd consider using a headhunter to find a position in Canada, Australia or New Zealand.  We'll see...

Davnasty

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Re: Las Vegas. I'm tired of this.
« Reply #149 on: October 04, 2017, 08:56:35 AM »
The US is way too far gone for gun control to help.    The only way the US is going to get gun violence under control is to confiscate and destroy all firearms in civilian hands.     Once they're all gone (a multi-year project if I ever heard of one), then you can start with modern gun regulation.

We all know this isn't ever going to happen.

I'm not sure it should, either.   The American ethos of the lone warrior defending his family/ranch/unit/comrades is actually very powerful.   As long as the US is willing to put up with the gun violence, I think it can be a net force for good in the world.    We can't have the government protecting us from everything.   Just look at child rearing expectations today.  A nanny government is a dismal future if I ever heard of one.

You would be better to focus on things that will make a difference.    Dealing with ghettos and urban poverty.   Better mental health care (along with better health care in general.)   Eliminating racism.
I kind of agree with this, but I'm hesitant to see it as this black and white. I still think it's a discussion worth having but I fear that many of the gun restrictive ideas in this thread would be less effective than we might hope.

-And the overarching idea that marketing and our consumerist lifestyle leads to life dissatisfaction, which leads to increased levels of depression in the population. Huh, I guess we're already working on a solution :) But seriously, a number of these indiscriminate killers have cited the shallowness and consumerism of American as their reason for killing.

Concerning gang violence I think the single biggest step we can take is drug legalization. Gangs exist primarily to sell drugs.
« Last Edit: October 04, 2017, 08:59:48 AM by Dabnasty »