Ongoing US Mass Shooting Thread

[Scornfire]

Originally Posted by shermanator

And then there's rhetoric like this floating around. Spoilered for size...

NSFW!

wow

[wwkayaker]

Excerpt from a Time.com article:

“But Florida’s cities and towns are virtually powerless to enact tougher gun regulations. As the Miami Herald pointed out, the Florida state legislature passed a law in 2011 allowing it to fine any mayor $5,000 personally, and even remove that mayor from office, if he or she tries to enforce stricter firearms laws. Towns that attempt to enforce local laws that aren’t in line with state gun regulations face up to $100,000 in legal damages as well.”

What a mess!

[Thor]

Oh how I feel joy for you people that have not been introduced to Dinesh, he is just an awful human being in every imaginable way.

[DuffMan]

Originally Posted by direwolf

Disgusting. I have no idea who this Dinesh D’Souza guy is, but man, what a despicable piece of s***.
.

He writes Hillary conspiracy books

[KootenayFlamesFan]

Banning bump stocks will go through because the NRA is ok with it. They won’t ban guns.

So it’s better than nothing, but barely. Trump will say he did something about gun control (and he’ll say Obama did nothing, he’s much tougher on gun control!), AR-15s will still be sold and then used in many more mass shootings, they will not be banned any time soon.

[dobbles]

Dinesh came to speak at my college in the early 00's. He hadn't quite gone off his rocker at that time. It seems like every time I see him in the news he gets more wacky.

[OMG!WTF!]

Originally Posted by dobbles

Dinesh came to speak at my college in the early 00's. He hadn't quite gone off his rocker at that time. It seems like every time I see him in the news he gets more wacky.

Yeah. It's almost like being extreme gets you noticed.

[CaptainCrunch]

Before I got in my car this morning, I was watching the news, and on CTV one interviewee was asked if more strict background checks would have prevented the shooter from buying guns. Her answer was a emphatic no. He'd passed a background check to by the gun that he used.

As has been discussed before, unless the US is willing to track accusations without trial and voluntary visits to health care professionals they're stuck with limited options, that go to the mechanics of gun control instead of the spirit of gun control.

Attempting to tighten the type of fire arms that can be bought. Shutting down the concept of gun shows, and heavier enforcement of gun crimes including minor gun crimes are probably where their going to have to work, and I doubt they get very far with that.

[oldschoolcalgary]

the background checks to prevent the mentally ill from owning guns is meant to prevent <some> future shootings.

unfortunately not everyone that does a mass shooting is mentally ill, however, if a common sense law prevents 1 less mass shooting in its history, its worth it.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by oldschoolcalgary

the background checks to prevent the mentally ill from owning guns is meant to prevent <some> future shootings.

unfortunately not everyone that does a mass shooting is mentally ill, however, if a common sense law prevents 1 less mass shooting in its history, its worth it.

I do understand what you're saying.

But lets say that you do this in the name of public safety. Whenever you go to see help from a mental health professional he has to enter it into a data base that's accessible for background checks.

I can guarantee you that a lot of people would no longer go to seek help.

you could argue that someone is diagnosed as part of a trial proceeding could be put in there.

I would also think that most doctors and their associations would refuse to comply.

[llwhiteoutll]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Before I got in my car this morning, I was watching the news, and on CTV one interviewee was asked if more strict background checks would have prevented the shooter from buying guns. Her answer was a emphatic no. He'd passed a background check to by the gun that he used.

As has been discussed before, unless the US is willing to track accusations without trial and voluntary visits to health care professionals they're stuck with limited options, that go to the mechanics of gun control instead of the spirit of gun control.

Attempting to tighten the type of fire arms that can be bought. Shutting down the concept of gun shows, and heavier enforcement of gun crimes including minor gun crimes are probably where their going to have to work, and I doubt they get very far with that.

I don’t see any great success coming from trying to further restrict the type of firearms that can be purchased. There are already firearms (full auto, SBR, SBS, suppressors, hidden/trick guns) that fall under Title II of the NFA and require registration and the extensive (up to a year) processing by the FBI/BATF/local LE. Attempting to expand that to include semi-automatics would see a fair amount of resistance, and not just from those who want to own an AR. If you’re going to put those restrictions on ARs only, Canada’s own classification system shows how restricting a specific firearm by name only doesn’t make sense.
Considering that the “gun show loophole” (the assumption that a purchaser at a show does not need to undergo a background check) does not actually exist, shutting down gun shows doesn’t really stop any type of transfer that could not happen anywhere else. The only transaction where a background check is not required is an in-state, private transaction. Now if you were to say that a federal law should be passed that mandates all firearm sales must either be processed through an FFL (requiring a NICS check) or the individuals must make their own arrangements for a NICS check, that would be something that is actionable. But using a broad brush to say that gun shows should be shut down isn’t really going to do anything as you are not addressing the circumstance where the check is not done.

[CaptainCrunch]

Maybe the way to solve it is to only allow the sales through government fire arms stories.

In exchange for buying any kind of weapon that you want, they design it like the DMV with 8 million lines that you have to go through that take hours each

"No sir, I know that you've been waiting in line for hours, but you need to get a DM2VC-1 form. this line is for DM2VC-1A forms, you'll have to go in that lineup there with a 10 hour waiting time"

Of course the side benefit is that most mass shootings would happen in those stores and they would be killing people that are trying to buy guns."

Its a joke, and a bad one.

[wwkayaker]

^what actions would you suggest to prevent gun deaths?

@llwhiteoutll

[llwhiteoutll]

Originally Posted by wwkayaker

^what actions would you suggest to prevent gun deaths?

@llwhiteoutll

I think you’d have to examine each type of death caused by firearm, because there is not going to be a universal fix.
Suicides by firearm make up a huge chunk of US gun deaths each year, but legislating guns won’t drop the suicide rate by itself. Improved access to mental health resources, greater education about identifying signs and destigmatizing accepting help and mental illness in general would be a good place to start. If people around you know what depression looks like and there isn’t any negative association with getting help, I would like to think that more people would get the help they need. You’re of course going to be relying on people to also self-identify that they need help, which isn’t going to be the case for everyone. In some cases you’ll have the situation where a mental health profession sees the risk of harm to others or self, since they are going to report that, I’d think that having that report linked to background check results would be acceptable to many. There should obviously be a case for appeal and any restrictions because of that report should be evidence based to prevent abuse.

Poverty reduction and community intervention programs to keep kids and youth from turning to high risk lifestyles in the first place. If opportunities for success are presented and are accessible, you can at least get some kids out of gangs and away from a life of criminality.

Those who have been convicted of a crime are already prohibited from legally buying guns and there is no real way to legislate or police the black market, so those involved in criminality and continue to be involved after release won’t be impacted by the requirement to buy guns in a specific way.

Accidental deaths and deaths caused by irresponsible storage are not going to be easy to legislate. Even Canadian storage laws are reactive in the sense that you’ll only see charges after the police have another reason to be there. Gun safety is pretty common sense and since you can’t test for it, having education available and recommendations on storage/handling would be the only real way that I see to address this.

[oldschoolcalgary]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

I do understand what you're saying.

But lets say that you do this in the name of public safety. Whenever you go to see help from a mental health professional he has to enter it into a data base that's accessible for background checks.

I can guarantee you that a lot of people would no longer go to seek help.

you could argue that someone is diagnosed as part of a trial proceeding could be put in there.

I would also think that most doctors and their associations would refuse to comply.

that's definitely possible; of course seeking mental health support isn't always a voluntary action...

i think one of the challenges is confidentiality.

Maybe someone will correct me, but it is my understanding that medical professionals also have a duty to report if there are signs that a patient is looking to harm someone or group of people. Public Safety is also something that is supposed to be considered.

it is a 'slippery slope' though - who is considered 'really' dangerous as opposed to 'moderately' dangerous.

i think that the actual discussion is important however and that any legislation will have been vetted and modified through the input of the legislative and professional bodies.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by Thor

Oh how I feel joy for you people that have not been introduced to Dinesh, he is just an awful human being in every imaginable way.

I'm sadly not among those people, I'm very familiar with Dinesh. He's an insufferable arsehole.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by oldschoolcalgary

that's definitely possible; of course seeking mental health support isn't always a voluntary action...

i think one of the challenges is confidentiality.

Maybe someone will correct me, but it is my understanding that medical professionals also have a duty to report if there are signs that a patient is looking to harm someone or group of people. Public Safety is also something that is supposed to be considered.

it is a 'slippery slope' though - who is considered 'really' dangerous as opposed to 'moderately' dangerous.

i think that the actual discussion is important however and that any legislation will have been vetted and modified through the input of the legislative and professional bodies.

I looked it up and it sounds like there's a duty to warn law on the books at state levels that allows professionals or compel professionals to call in tips if they feel a patient could become violent and it relieves them from the possibility of a civil suit.

http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/...y-to-warn.aspx

But there's no formalized mechanism for tracking the tip, nor is it shared federally.

It basically looks like the professional phones the police and it ends there.

[troutman]

Billionaire Mike Bloomberg offers to 'match every donation' to fight gun violence

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/04/mike...-violence.html

[direwolf]

Trump and Pence having a "listening session" with students and teachers at the White House. Some pretty good questions and statements from some of the people gathered, but not surprisingly they're just getting the usual hollow bulls*** from Trump: "we have lots of ideas to fix this, the best ideas, the shooter was a sick maniac, we're gonna be strong on background checks and get things done...yadda yadda yadda."

And now he's talking about putting armed professional commandos in all the schools and arming teachers.





Sadly I doubt anything significant will come from this meeting, and anything proposed in regards to possible gun legislation will just get shot down in the Senate.

Props to those kids/teachers/parents though for actually forcing this meeting to happen, and I'm amazed that they were actually allowed to mention guns on camera in front of Trump. Good on 'em. It's a start at least.

[driveway]

Starting to see articles about brands owned by diversified gun/ammo manufacturers, with the intent of targeting those brands for boycotts.

Eg:

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/02/...the-gun-lobby/

If you bought a cute little Copilot trailer to ferry your kid around town with your bike, we’ve got some bad news: Your purchase supported the gun industry.

Same goes if you paid for a Bell or Giro brand bike helmet, or a Razkulls child helmet or Camelbak water bottle. All of those bike brands are properties of Vista Outdoor, which is also the largest ammunition manufacturer in America.