Tons of people in the Twitter comments are equating it directly or indirectly.
Today's mass shooting in the US
- Thread starter Rroff
- Start date
Tons of people in the Twitter comments are equating it directly or indirectly.
Nearly as a many children are killed and more are seriously injured by pets each year as firearms - but I don't see the same concerns aimed at the parents owning pets. You can aim most of the same justifications as well i.e. no one needs to own a pet.
Difficult to get good numbers for it - some years are very different both ways and often the stats focus on dogs rather than pets in general and/or stats only take into account various age ranges not directly comparable. Typically numbers killed by pets is in the dozens while firearms range from dozens to 2022 for instance where it was nearly 300 for <11 years of age.
EDIT: Ultimately though I just think people get far too worked up by firearms, the problems run far deeper than that - I'd be very surprised if we saw anything like the same numbers (adjusted for population) in the UK or most other countries with the same firearms proliferation as the US even with a similar gun culture. I think some people would be a bit surprised by the true picture of firearms ownership in the UK as well - living in a rural area there are many people around where I live who own shotguns and rifles, etc. but firearms incidents are almost non-existent - in fact one of the lowest in the country despite also being one of the areas amongst the highest ownership.
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Not dumb at all if people's real justifications are the preservation of life.
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One of the reasons IMO civilian firearms should be limited to straight pull/bolt action, albeit some people might be able to modify them but they probably have a skill set which would enable them to produce deadly weapons anyhow. Those 3 cops were hit before they really had time to react.
Apparently at least one of the shooter's weapons was modified semi-auto so as to fire both on the trigger pull and release.
Watched a segment of Brandon Herrera doing a college speech, IIRC in his campaign for congress, there is a lot of stuff I don't entirely disagree with in a very general way in some respects but when he was trying to downplay the implications of things like mental health and firearms access/control I could only facepalm.
On a kind of related note - I've several acquaintances on Facebook who were just ranting about the Bully XL bans, etc. and linking stuff like https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=706495791516095&set=a.455919649907045 saying about how it is all the owner (ban bad owners) and people should be able to own whatever dog they liked and then pivoted to this event and were ranting on about banning guns and no one should own a gun... without a hint of irony.
#facepalm#
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A chance they want to off themselves somewhere familiar or memorable to them, but more normally these people either off themselves at the scene, are cowards and surrender or suicide by cop.
So far seem to be suggestions of active evasion which tends to mean they don't want to die, or they'll off themselves when cornered.
EDIT: "Surveillance video shows suspected gunman shooting inside of Las Vegas luxury condo complex" - only in the US could he be back out from jail in only days...
Sums up many of the issues with the US though - he obviously has some mental health issues and in this country, even with more relaxed regulations, his chances of getting anywhere near a gun would be incredibly small in comparison.
Also amazing how rapidly he has a change of heart when bullets are going the other way...
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Depends what your underlying motivation and thresholds are. Ultimately the reasoning should be about saving lives.
No but some changes would massively reduce the chances of them happening and other changes would hugely reduce the ability to kill quickly and efficiently in the opening moments which is typically where most deaths happen.
Compared to people's perceptions there are actually quite a few owners of firearms in the UK but some of the measures like the limits on owning semi-automatic never mind automatic go a long way to preventing incidents, most of the recent(ish) ones, 2010s onward, have involved shotguns which personally I'd say need to come inline with rifle regulations.
Though some of the issues involved in why it is so bad in the US goes beyond firearms.
I don't know specifics off the top of my head - but several of the farmers or estate owners around here have stuff like .240 or .270 or whatever it is rifles which aside from being straight pull are very similar to an AR15. Even the AR15s owned by many in the US aren't really "assault" weapons in any significant way different to most of the "hunting" rifles, etc. though the typical AR15 setup would be inferior for many hunting uses.
I dislike the focus on stuff like "assault" weapons and magazine capacity - mechanically most of the AR15 and similar in civilian ownership are no different really to a hunting rifle, magazine capacity only really makes a tiny difference - a far bigger difference would be attained by restricting semi-automatic - which allows for more rapid aimed fire as well as more easily modified by things like bump-stocks for rapid fire.
I'm not a fan of prohibition type approaches and/or reducing things down to purely a needs basis - everyone if fine with it until it is something which affects them
but for many people having firearms restricted to straight-pull and/or bolt action does not prevent them using and enjoying their firearms while going a very long way to reducing their effectiveness in mass-shooting scenarios.America did just fine when the Assault Weapons Ban was law. I'm sure I saw a stat that showed a massive increase in mass shotting since the ban was lifted in 2004
Quick google
Studies: Gun Massacre Deaths Dropped During Assault Weapons Ban, Increased After Expiration | United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Gun massacres fell 37 percent while ban was in place, rose by 183 percent after ban...www.judiciary.senate.gov
Personally think that is misleading - if you look at a larger number of years prior the reduction isn't much different to the normal ebb and flow over the years of mass shooting casualties and there are a lot of reasons why mass shootings have ramped up, and continue to ramp up, after 2008 including the various financial/economical collapses which always tend to precipitate that kind of stuff.
EDIT: While the proportions aren't massively out, also around 80% of mass shootings involve weapons not covered by the ban, though it doesn't preclude the ban having some extended psychological impact - by far the most mass shootings are carried out using non-assault weapon type handguns or shotguns.
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It is either that or the hesitation - either due to not being sure who is actually the perpetrator, freezing up or self-doubt, etc. More often than not the bad guy(s) have the upper hand in these situations.
Interestingly the UK has an almost inverse proportional relationship between the firearm ownership density of an area and firearm related crime. I live in one of the areas of the UK with high firearms ownership density and I can't even remember the last time anything happened.
Same here, there have been the odd shop or fuel station held up by someone with a shotgun but the weapons weren't legally held anyhow and not related to farming, etc. the only other firearms related incident I'm aware of is an old boy offed himself with a WW2 revolver he'd held on to after his wife died (pretty lucky no one else got hit as the round went through and exit out the window behind him and must have crossed the pavement outside about shoulder height).
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Not a mass shooting but head of a large healthcare insurance company in the US gunned down, and the vast majority of the comments from US posters are basically that he had it coming and how evil health insurance is - yet they largely look down on the likes of the NHS and vote against such systems.