I'd say the problem is people that shouldn't have access to firearms having them, in addition to lack of mental health services... why does it have to be a singular problem?
Las Vegas Shooting
- Thread starter Kittamaru
- Start date
I'd say the problem is people that shouldn't have access to firearms having them, in addition to lack of mental health services... why does it have to be a singular problem?
that individual doesn't fit any profile of a mass shooter. the thing with mass shooters is they are not necessarily the same as serial killers. they are not necessarily psychopaths. more like they snapped somehow at some point. it can't always be predicted so profiling is prejudicial and inaccurate. the vast majority of people with mental health histories do not end up committing mass shootings.
I think, what is truly, spectacularly pathetic about all this... is that the pro-gun group is so hellbent on keeping their precious guns against a threat that doesn't exist (total confiscation) that they aren't even willing to come to the table in rational discussion about what can be done to prevent a massacre like this from happening again. Even the thought that someone might want to change the rules in some way is enough to send them cowering in fear with their weapons against some boogeyman that simply doesn't exist...
One doesn't just "snap" without reason. The fact that we don't know said reason is not good justification to do nothing at all. We have done nothing for too long, and the mass shootings keep happening, and more people keep dying...
when is enough going to be enough? I guess for some, it won't be "enough" until it is their son or daughter, brother or sister, spouse or parent that is laying dead somewhere because someone had enough firepower to arm their own mercenary squad and decided to go loco with it...
As an example - the law limits how much pseudo-ephedrine I can buy in a thirty day period. To my knowledge, there is no such limit on purchasing ammunition of any grade. Does one person really need the ability to go and purchase, on a whim, several hundred to several thousand rounds of high-power ordinance?
One doesn't just "snap" without reason. The fact that we don't know said reason is not good justification to do nothing at all. We have done nothing for too long, and the mass shootings keep happening, and more people keep dying...
when is enough going to be enough? I guess for some, it won't be "enough" until it is their son or daughter, brother or sister, spouse or parent that is laying dead somewhere because someone had enough firepower to arm their own mercenary squad and decided to go loco with it...
That is a good, honest question - and one that would require debate and consensus. Back and forth and compromise.
As an example - the law limits how much pseudo-ephedrine I can buy in a thirty day period. To my knowledge, there is no such limit on purchasing ammunition of any grade. Does one person really need the ability to go and purchase, on a whim, several hundred to several thousand rounds of high-power ordinance?
Let me try again...
Personally, I'm awaiting a replay of the Las Vegas Mandalay incident with one small but significant change - substitute a minigun for SP's armament. Imagine the headlines - 20,000 attend concert, 10,000 dead. Would THAT be a call to action?
Probably not. Ownership of miniguns by civilians is prohibited under existing law, after all... Nothing can be done - everyone says so.
Probably not. Ownership of miniguns by civilians is prohibited under existing law, after all... Nothing can be done - everyone says so.
So what do you propose, then, that we do? Simply accept that people are going to die, shrug our shoulders, and go "That's too bad"?
That is not what I propose, but that is what I forecast. With 10-1 odds. If you're interested I will provide a mechanism for accepting wagers. Do you want to bet?
hey, I don't make the laws. I am all for banning assault weapons that result in mass shootings. i'm not for indiscriminate killing unless it's every human on the planet resulting in extinction. then, how can you complain or have grievance because no one exists?
with 10k, all at 'once', society isn't going to stand for it. notice it's a numbers game.
So... We have established hypothetical boundaries. If 10/20 k are decimated, our society shall act.
I await the day of the minigun ...
considering the fact you have complained that gun regulation that the framers themselves did are an unconstitutional infringement on civil liberties your hardly qualified to make such claims. in colonial america registering ones guns was considered legal. the government checking on proper storage was ok. the simple fact remains your argument is more NRA propaganda and less reasoned researched principle. your just another acolyte to the cult of the gun.
why don't the yakuzi use guns?
actually there are a handful maybe 20 or so individual guns that are legal in the states for civilians to own as such things go.
I do hope that this isn't aimed at me Kit - I can provide BS for you if you prefer it to a hard assessment of reality. If you are dissenting, please provide evidence that this Vegas event will cause a change in policy - you know, some historical precedent...
Perhaps you are misinterpreting my thoughts as wishes - trust me, they are not. I have a host of common sense ideas on gun regulation that are not welcome in the insanity of 21st century America. None of which prohibit exercise of our 2nd amendment rights - at least not unless you believe those rights should be totally uninfringed - and unhinged - in which case we are back to my minigun hypothetical.
(I know you, Kit, personally don't think that "those rights should be totally uninfringed" - merely a rhetorical device)
Am I hearing you right? Civilians can legally own these things, even twenty of us? Really?
OK, how about nuclear weapons? Shall I switch my thought experiment or are those allowed to certain individuals also?
Well, see, the thing is that society is capable of having these discussions as long as it is willing to.
Think of everything else we can do.
And think of some of the stuff we can't.
So let's start with an obvious one. There is a class of criminal behavior whereby society just doesn't want to acknowledge the danger. As a result, instead of keeping guns out of their hands through felony exclusions, we try to extend the felony exclusion to cover misdemeanors. See, the idea, here, is that someday I might have a wife that I need to beat, and that shouldn't mean I can't have my gun with me when ... when ... well, you know the rest, right?
I remarked, earlier in the thread that this aspect has been known to drive some otherwise intelligent people I know bonkers. I really don't get it, but we're doing everything we can to keep certain domestic violence and stalking from being felonies, and, yes, the right of a stalker to bear arms while stalking is one of the stakes.
So we can start with that one:
▸ Is there a legitimate reason to issue this protection order against you on behalf of a spouse, domestic or intimate partner, or former thereof? Yes? Okay, hand over your guns until we get this sorted out.
Perfectly straightforward. When so much so apparently orbits the question of whether the abuser has access to a gun, we have our reasons.
We know what the problem is, right? And we also know, from other lessons in the past, about the problem with hewing to the problem? Here, for the gallery, just so we can remind the young'n's: The problem is that any range has a borderline. The problem with hewing to that problem is that we then protect what is beyond the pale as if it was borderline. And rolling up a few extra cases with the borderline isn't a big deal if we're talking about how perfectly centered the edible decals on the box-mix sugar cookies are, but when those determinations have literal life and death implications, what then? It's one thing to worry about that problem, but the discussion generally doesn't get far enough.
In the deevee question, the difference is a sevenfold-plus increase in likelihood. And the reason we don't settle this question is that the overwhelming majority of beneficiaries will be women, and the overwhelming majority of risk—e.g., temporary or permanent loss of firearm access—falls to men. Therefore, we will stretch the constitutionality of our authority by extending felony exclusions to cover preferred misdemeanors. What could possibly go wrong?
In some aspects, we might wonder who shall be judge or jury, as such, without pausing to wonder who presently is.
There is also a mental health question. A detail from one or another shooting a few years ago is that the killer's family had tried to intervene in his firearm danger and failed because the laws just didn't afford such courses. Say what we want about banning various boxes, because it's true, the same question will apply. There will, however, also be some clear-cut cases that, presently, the laws simply will not afford any manner of intervention.
The question of judge and jury doesn't become particularly sticky until we engage the borderline ranges.
In the early part of the century, Bureau of Justice Statistics numbers emerged regarding firearm offenses among federal prisoners, and one of the topline notes, were toplines a trend at BJS back then, would have been that these offenders got their weapons from friends and family just as often as through collective illegal means. My cynical distillation was that these criminals were getting their guns from "responsible gun owners" at least as much as they were from illegal sources. Regardless of how we settle the deevee and stalking questions about misdemeanor and felony, there are simply some felons who we already know can't have guns, and we leave far too many pathways open.
Toward that, we had a case about a decade ago that still bugs me to this day. It was a DV, with prior history, on a foreign alien who had overstayed his visa, and when the cops had him, they turned him loose. Seventeen hours. They arrested him for coming after his pregnant ex-girlfriend, and over the next seventeen hours, he was released, obtained a .357 from a friend who insists the gun was stolen, and shot her to death before killing himself. Seventeen hours. And we had him.
I want that friend to prove the gun was stolen.
I want "stolen" to mean more than my friend walked into my place, took the loaded weapon from wherever he knew he could easily access it because he had been told and shown where it was and the thing was left unsecured, and I just plain didn't notice because, well, I just don't pay that close of attention to my gun and bullets.
I think we can do that. I think that's within our right as a society to demand a bit more responsibility than that.
It's like when the guy died while doing the horse. Turns out we didn't have a law against having sex with animals, so ... they tried to charge the cameraman with trespassing, except he had been invited, so ... er ... ah ....
And, you know, back then there wasn't really any confusion about freedom and necessity. That is to say, they passed the damn law, and we comforted ourselves on the dearth with the pretense that we never really needed the law before that because, well, right.
Uh huh. Whatever. We believe them. And I digress.
I guess the larger point is that there is plenty we can do before ... I don't know, something. I suppose it feels like I get your question but it feels way too early and sounds way too preclusive.
But you can't see any particular reason why.
On the other hand, the obvious problems with your continual deflections, irrelevancies, and self-justifying paranoid imaginings ( such as the fact that you have to pretend all the racial and corporate influences don't matter, and the Republican political and media faction is just a side) don't matter if all you have to do is post irrelevant truisms and hope your reader will fill in the missing sense, content, etc.
And this is a wingnut media creation - this entire squidink of reason-averse, content-free, timewasting dissemblings that seem to work as comfort food for the castaway mind. The Republican Party of Trump, like that of W, is painful for these guys.
And that is the reaction to the yet again repeated scald of Republican politics - an almost comical flinch from the physical reality.
Yes. Have you read about the reality where a Republican administration got people to torture other people under the American flag? That wasn't an experiment - that was a policy, with special built prisons and dedicated funding.
They got elected in part by the actual media in real time selling the voters on the threat of a "liberal media" conspiring to bring tyranny via gun control. That's a major factor in how they got power, which they used to torture people and start worthless wars and cripple the Bill of Rights. Except for the Second Amendment, of course.
Last edited:
I agree. Except I would change tenses: "plenty we can do before" ---> "plenty we could have done before" (present perfect? I get so confused with these...) - but, we won't. Sickening.
I'm trying to explore the boundaries, if any exist, even here - in a totally unscientific setting (ironic, considering the site I'm on). What, exactly, would cause an honest reevaluation of second amendment interpretation - and when will such discussion and reference not cause all to immediately prostrate themselves in worship of said "holy" amendment?
I think we are in the process of establishing that 50+ dead and 500+ injured won't do it... But, perhaps, 10,000 of 20,000 would be cause for the "talk". Hmmmpphhh...
Why in all that is holy would anyone want to do further damage to the "interpretation" of any part of the Bill of Rights, in the current political situation? It's plain English. You can't jack around with it without risking serious damage to basic Constitutional oversight. And it's almost completely unnecessary to do so.
We are so far from hitting the Constitutional limits on gun control we can hardly see them from here. The low hanging fruit - background checks, accountability for negligence, police oversight, etc - are all around.