No assault rifles for people on behavioral meds or people with a history of violent crime

You often don't see any signs.

 

Like the entirely visible signals this shooter have?

 

Which aren't?

To the topic, do you have any idea what % of the population is on SSRIs?

The solution to increasing violence has nothing to do with more gun control and everything to do with addressing the endemic social problems of many leftist sacred cows. You and others don't want to do the heavy lifting and harsh, reflective analysis, so try fruitlessly to make it all about guns over and over.

 

Or as everyone has noted the ZERO signs shown by the Vegas shooter.

We have had a higher rate of gun ownership in the past and yet it mass shootings weren't an issue. There are two problems, one is that you can't really gauge mass shootings in the past because no record keeping was done. What we seem to believe is that there are more shootings today than in the past in which case I will point people to Chicago in the 1920s which was rife with mafia shootings.

The mass shootings today however have less to do with organized crime that the self esteem and "I am the center of the universe" attitude that kids are taught these days.

 

Out of all these shootings the Vegas shooter is the outlier. We still know little about it which I think is curious.

 

1. From what I've read, the boy was no longer on his meds.
2. Already in place, and not just for assault rifles, for ALL firearms. That's what irritates me so much about gun control advocates. You don't even know existing laws, and then act as if you are experts in the field.

 

Again, utter ignorance. It's already against the law (and has been since 196 for the following groups of people to own guns: convicted felons, those dishonorably discharged from the military, those that have been adjudicated as being mentally ill (which practically means have been involuntarily incarcerated in a mental hospital), those convicted of certain domestic violence misdemeanors, and illegal drug users.

 

Regardless, federal law prohibits all felons (violent or not) from owning guns (and has since 196.

 

Guns are an effective defense against people without guns. About 80% of violent crimes are committed without guns. I view a gun as being effective defense against those crimes. I think you tend to only read research that confirms your views. You're only human.

 

Yup,

Referring to your sig, when I was a teen, it wasn't quite as gun heavy as your experience (we weren't allowed to have them in our cars/trucks at school), but I knew very few teenaged boys (none in my circle of good friends) who didn't have access to at least a rifle or shotgun. It just wasn't a problem.

 

Of course the totally "sane" people that get approved to own a gun, can freak out at any time.

The mentality of most 2nd Amendment Gun Huggers is the type of person that would be very docile (and legally obtain a weapon) and, then, after their wife files for divorce, kill themselves (and take their spouse and 20 other people with them).

2nd Amendment Killers gonna 2nd Amendment Kill.:smfh:

The 2nd Amendment?

 

Current federal law prohibits all felons (violent or nonviolent) from owning guns. It also prohibits those that commit certain domestic violence misdemeanors from owning guns, as well as those adjudicated as mentally ill, those dishonorably discharged from the military, and illegal drug users.

From the BATF's website: (the BATFE being the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms).

It is much more inclusive than your #2 in the OP. Again, I am always shocked as to how ignorant anti-gun folks are about gun laws.

https://www.atf.gov/firearms/identify-prohibited-persons

 

Problem is not so much what the ACLU says, but what the law says.

Bottom line, I simply see no reason for anybody to have access to assault weapons. Nor do the laws... Not even a very activist Republican Supreme Court went that far. So that should be the starting point.

 

I have yet to figure out why they should be banned, since handguns have been responsible for more mass shooting murders than have assault rifles, and are responsible for more non-mass shooting murders than are rifles of any type. The deadliest school shooting (Virginia Tech) used two handguns.

 

Then you should write your congressman and demand that they outlaw guns for cops. No need for them to carry them since they are useless in self defense. You can include the military too. Send em out with base ball bats.

Anyone who thinks a gun with a skilled shooter is not self defense is 6 rounds short of a load.

 

This right here is a perfect example of why nothing of consequence gets done.


OP, my idea is pretty similar to what you posted except it needs to be done through the courts, not just randomly based on a database which may or may not be up to date and correct.

To your second point, thats already law and just not followed as faithfully as it should be by anyone. The Texas shooter should have been barred from buying any firearm but the Air Force just decided to not report him to NICS as required by federal law.

 

A gun with a skilled shooter, trained and practiced, yes. Unless you are a soldier or a cop you are not. Marksmanship is a skill both difificult and perishable. It is a full time occupation and anyone not full time has neither the time nor the resources to be as good as they should.. And yes, I realize this means most cops and military aren't. While most are exemplars of how good people can be with inadequate training and practice our news is replete with stories of cops whose skills were simply not good enough to save their own lives.

My understanding is that most (definitely not all, but most) cops in England are unarmed. They take the attitude that guns are extremely dangerous to everybody and should be limited to those with specialized training and adequate practice. The English are, unlike Americans, famed for having common sense.

 

I'm just trying to figure out what the heck has happened to us in the last 10 years. I grew up in the gun crazy south, in the 50's and 60's. EVERYONE had a gun, and NO SCHOOLS (or office complexes) got shot.

Conservative Pat Buchanan suggests that since religion has been under relentless attack as "antiquated bourgeois instrument of control (my term),"
and single parenthood has skyrocketed, that our culture is coming completely unglued, or in his words:

In [the Florida shooter's] case, the conscience was dead, or was buried beneath hatred, rage or resentment at those succeeding where he had failed. He had been rejected, cast aside, expelled. This would be his revenge, and it would be something for Douglas High and the nation to see — and never forget.

Indeed, it seems a common denominator of the atrocities to which we have been witness in recent years is that the perpetrators are nobodies who wish to die as somebodies.

If a sense of grievance against those perceived to have injured them is the goad that drives misfits like Cruz to mass murder, the magnet that draws them to it is infamy. Infamy is their shortcut to immortality.

From the killings in Columbine to Dylann Roof’s murder of black parishioners at the Charleston Church, from the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando to the slaughter of first-graders in Newtown, to Las Vegas last October where Stephen Paddock, firing from an upper floor of the Mandalay Bay, shot dead 58 people and wounded hundreds at a country music festival — these atrocities enter the social and cultural history of the nation. And those who carry them out achieve a recognition few Americans ever know. Charles Whitman, shooting 47 people from that Texas tower in 1966, is the original model.

....

Evil has its own hierarchy of rewards. Perhaps the most famous man of the 20th century was Hitler, with Stalin and Mao among his leading rivals.
....

Another factor helps to explain what happened Wednesday: We are a formerly Christian society in an advanced state of decomposition.

Nikolas Cruz was a product of broken families. He was adopted. Both adoptive parents had died. Where did he get his ideas of right and wrong, good and evil? Before the Death of God and repeal of the Ten Commandments, in those dark old days, the 1950s, atrocities common now were almost nonexistent.

 

How is this even an argument?

It's like saying we shouldn't do anything to prevent radical Islamic terrorists mass shootings in the U.S. because extreme right-wing religious fanatics have been responsible for more mass shootings.

I don't know what would have happened if this guy in South Florida had used a hand gun instead of an assault weapon. Maybe he would have killed 16 instead of 17. amd saved one life. And I don't know how many more lives would have been saved in as Vegas or in Orlando. But the point is that there is no reason whatsoever not to do this. There is no other use for an assault weapon other than to kill as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.

 

The law would apply regardless of whether you're actually taking the medication as prescribed. Being prescribed the medication in the first place would be the trigger.

Actually, no it is not. The law your thinking of only applies to licensed sellers. Unlicensed sellers don't have to run a background check on their buyers. But thanks for your useless contribution.

 

Thanks for another worthless contribution to this thread. 922(b) only makes it unlawful to sell to convicted felons if the seller knows or reasonably should know of the buyer's status. But under the current regulatory framework, a seller doesn't know and is not expected to reasonably know unless they perform a background check. And only licensed sellers are required to perform background checks. Unlicensed sales account for 40% of gun sales in the states. That's a pretty big loophole you neglected to mention when you claimed that my proposal is already the law. I guess your 20 seconds of google sleuthing did not pay off. And now we're all dumber for having read your post. Thanks.

 

The problem with the medication angle is that stuff is supposed to be confidential.

 

And it can remain confidential for all purposes except weapons background checks. And it's not like the seller is going to be told why a prospective buyer failed the background check. All they'll know is that the buyer failed the check.

 

Assault rifles are already illegal for civilians to own.

Maybe you are referring to what liberals call assault weapons that have cosmetic features on them that makes then really scary looking ?

You are on the right track with those on meds.

There would be a problem in California, Jerry Brown and the liberals have made most violent crimes non violent crimes as of January 1st.

But the real problem is political correctness not guns.

 

I daresay that the kind of friends of a man who needs a gun in a hurry will have a small arsenal of them from which to supply one, and wouldn't give a toss about the illegality of it, right?