OT Active Shooters in Vegas

What's your solution? Let me guess, give more people guns?

 

Criminals rarely use legal guns to commit crimes anyway.

Enforce the extremely extensive and all-encompassing existing laws AND PRISON SENTENCES against bad behavior.

All urban areas with severe (un-Constitutional) restrictions preventing the legal possession of firearms compounds the mistake by electing liberal judges who wimp out on sentencing, and are rife with liberal parole boards who constantly undermine the system by unleashing proven bad people over and over and over and over. Over 3/4ths of all crime in America is committed by repeat offenders.

If you think getting rid of guns is an answer to less crime in Chicago, consider the more effective move of getting rid of the actual POS bad people in Chicago. We have a system for that. It's called the Justice System and it works like a charm when used correctly.

BTW, violent crime in America has dropped over 50% since I was your age and despite terrorists and other headlines it is still in a freefall.

 

low bar

 

#1 stop counting suicides when we talk about gun violence. It's not part of this discussion that we're having, it's a completely different discussion entirely, but anti-gun people include it because it makes the stats look worse.

#2 realize that in a country of 323 million people, we're going to have homicides. We're going to have accidents. We're going to have deaths. According to the CDC, 2,626,418 people died last year from a number of different causes. Think about that.... 2.6 million people died last year. 44 thousand of those were from suicide. Cancer and heart disease were BY FAR the biggest killers. Just under 600k died from cancer and around 623 thousand from heart disease. Just a little over 11k deaths from guns in homicides. 11 thousand people in a country of 323 million. It's not an epidemic. The odds are extremely low that you will be killed by a gun. It's not even one of the top two things that could kill you. Why aren't we more concerned about our health? Obesity, and especially childhood obesity, IS an epidemic in this country.

#3 realize that "common sense gun laws" are bullshit. They wouldn't stop a mass shooting. It's not even a bandaid. It's a placebo. The Las Vegas shooter had no criminal record, so he passed his background checks with flying colors. He had no history of mental illness. He had money, so he could buy as many guns as he wanted. He thoroughly planned this attack out, so no amount of waiting period would have stopped him. So what law exactly are people hoping would have prevented Las Vegas from happening?

#4 We need to be addressing the cause of gun deaths, no the method with which they were carried out. Whether it's someone who commits suicide, or someone who does a drive by shooting, or someone who shoots up a school. There's a reason why they did it, and that reason is not guns. They're not shooting people because of guns, they're shooting because they're pissed off at the world. They're pissed off at their classmates, they're pissed off at the government, they're pissed off at their spouse or their parents, they're depressed, etc. Guns are not the reason. They're merely the tool. Similarly, the terrorist attack in Nice, France had nothing to do with trucks. It was someone carrying out an attack in the name of Islam, and his truck was the tool with which he was using to carry it out.

 

The question is will this be made for a Netflix or will it go to the movie theater.

 

I agree that it's a number used to inflate the severity of an issue. But, that doesn't mean the issue isn't already bad.

Yes, and we try and stop Cancer, we invest in research and outlaw certain carcinogens and regulate the use of others. Just because one issue isn't killing as many people as another issue doesn't mean it's not way the fuck out of bounds. I'm sure if you were a parent/brother/.... of one of the people slaughtered with guns than you might think that guns are an epidemic. The odds are extremely low that you will be killed by plane crash but we have miles of laws and regulations to guard our safety in the air. And in fact, we most likely would have many times more deaths from flying if we didn't regulate this form of travel. In 2016 there were 325 deaths from flying worldwide, but since cancer kills more, lets just fuck all the regulations and let chaos reign supreme.

This is your contention but not everyone agrees. I was listening to an interview today and the person said if all gun purchases had to be monitored then a slew of guns in a short time would have sent off warning signals and law enforcement might very well have been at least alerted that the shooter was stockpiling many guns and ammo quickly. Would that have stopped him? I don't know, but there is a chance. Or getting rid of any gun sale that isn't through a licensed dealer would knock out many people who buy on the grey market (almost 50% of all gun sales). Requiring owners to have ample locked storage for all firearms might keep more of them actually locked up instead of stolen by thieves or family members and used for murder or suicide. Hell, taking away bump stocks would have likely lessened the damage. Everyone knows we aren't going to stop all murders or mass killings or terrorist attacks, but perhaps we can mitigate the damage. If some killer can only kill 20 people instead of 40, that's actually a win. It's still atrocity but at least the damage was lessened.

I'm not sure what laws could or couldn't make an impact, but I think it's highly suspect of you to summarily proclaim they are bullshit and wouldn't stop a mass shooting. They wouldn't stop all, but I can't imagine if we approached these laws with integrity that we couldn't forge an outcome with fewer killed.

There are multiple approaches that can take place at the same time. We can do a better job diagnosing mental health issues and make sure those people are covered. We can work to alleviate the social pressures in inner cities and in classroom. And, we can mitigate the negative outcomes when something does go terribly wrong.






I like my guns too, but we live in a civilization. At least for the time being.

 

Tl/dr

On its face though I disagree completely with not classifying suicides as gun violence. Guns make it easy to kill yourself. Most people wouldn't kill themselves if it would take longer and be more painful.

 

That's a meme so I'm not sure how true it is but we've been calling for this for some time. I can't stand big Pharma.

 

you know what might help (not in all cases) is real universal healthcare. With good mental hel are components. We can approach this issue from multiple fronts.

 

I'm willing to venture most of them had some kind of Autism Spectrum Disorder as well.

 

I agree, but my point is merely that I think it's a different discussion.

I think it's interesting that you mention airplane safety/regulation because there's two kinds of regulation. You have regulation of pilots/airlines and you have the regulation of passengers. We drastically changed our security for airline passengers after 9/11, but I thought that was a little crazy because there wasn't a breakdown in security. The terrorists had box cutters, and at that time it was perfectly legal to bring any blade under 4 inches on the plane with you. That included box cutters. So they could have merely banned any blades on the plane, but instead they spent a ton of money completely revamping security, creating an entirely new agency to oversee security, and did it really change anything? Couldn't they have just taken box cutters off the approved list? How much money did the government spend on airline safety for, as you said, 325 deaths per year worldwide? And how many of those are from single engine planes that go down due to either pilot error, or mechanical failure? There have been a ton of scandals about the TSA since 9/11. Invasions of privacy, lapses in judgement, and how much of a difference has it actually made?

How would they be monitored? All gun sales? Do you realize how much money/man power it would take to accomplish that? Who would verify if guns are stored properly? There are an estimated 300 million guns in America. How could we possibly enforce that law? I get that people are frustrated and feel helpless, but my point has always been that quickly tossing out "common sense gun laws" as the retort to mass shootings is not constructive, and it wouldn't accomplish the things that people want it to accomplish. There are so many more important things that our government could spend their money on. How about education? How about health care? How about infrastructure? I get that 11,000 people dying to guns is tragic and sad, but everything costs money. The government only has so much money it can spend. Wouldn't you rather spend that money on something that might actually address violence in America at its core? Not just the tool that is being used to carry out that violence...

All of that costs money. and the current deficit in the US is $440 billion dollars going into 2018. Where is the money going to come from? I agree that we have to do something, but I would prefer that we do something that targets the criminals and not the law abiding citizens. It makes more sense to try to address the problem at its roots.

 

Absolute nonsense.

 

Here is a perfect example of why I think the problem with gun violence is much more complex than simply passing laws:

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-n...d_drunken_driver_accus.html#incart_river_home

Here is a guy who had been convicted of drunk driving, he has a suspended license, he has outstanding warrants, but he was able to get behind the wheel while drunk and kill a family of five. He has a suspended license. He shouldn't have been able to drive. He broke the law by getting behind the wheel. He broke the law by drinking alcohol and driving. With all of the regulations and laws, this shouldn't have happened, right? But it did. There are five dead people because this guy is a piece of shit, and he doesn't care about anyone but himself. No amount of laws or regulations will prevent shitty people from doing shitty things.

 

What should we do? Short of confiscating all guns, what law would you pass that would have prevented Vegas from happening?