Today's mass shooting in the US

Trusty said:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43235969

Surprised no one has posted this..
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Funny how he's trying to milk his idea of lobbyists having no influence over him, cos he's a billionaire yo etc.. and play along with the current media narrative... he probably will get some token controls/legislation though, there probably(very likely) will still be more school shootings and he probably won't try to force any serious change. Still I guess it is better than nothing and he can perhaps do some grandstanding afterwards, claim he's done more than Omaha etc..
 
ianh said:
It seems people are more caught up in the hype about "removing guns" but doing little about finding the root cause as to "why" white male students keep doing this. If all the guns are gone then the root cause will still be there and people will find other ways to cause carnage, so shouldn't getting rid of the root cause also be a very high priority?
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They will still find a way, guns just make it WAY easier.
 
ianh said:
It seems people are more caught up in the hype about "removing guns" but doing little about finding the root cause as to "why" white male students keep doing this. If all the guns are gone then the root cause will still be there and people will find other ways to cause carnage, so shouldn't getting rid of the root cause also be a very high priority?
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Or focus on the more serious problem, easily accessible tools of death.
 
ianh said:
It seems people are more caught up in the hype about "removing guns" but doing little about finding the root cause as to "why" white male students keep doing this. If all the guns are gone then the root cause will still be there and people will find other ways to cause carnage, so shouldn't getting rid of the root cause also be a very high priority?
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I would be pretty certain that if the laws in China change tomorrow and allow anyone easy access to guns like the US, random shootings will go through the roof.
 
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ianh said:
It seems people are more caught up in the hype about "removing guns" but doing little about finding the root cause as to "why" white male students keep doing this. If all the guns are gone then the root cause will still be there and people will find other ways to cause carnage, so shouldn't getting rid of the root cause also be a very high priority?
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As i said somewhat earlier. The underling theme seems to be the nerdy kid with domestic issues who is bullied at school.

Given that these attacks happen several times a year it is easy to forget that, when you consider the numbers of young white Males out these. this is actually a very rare event. pretty much 20 black people (Mostly youths/young adults) shoot each other to death every single day and yet because this only happens one or two at a time (And perhaps because they are Black as well, "NHI" and all that :( ) this isn't news and hasn't been for a long time.

Now, it is also fair to say that young Black males shooting up a school doesn't really happen.

This may be because you do not get the sort of nerd-baiting in Black schools that is routine in white ones. It also may be the case that "Domestic issues" are so common among Black youths that it really isn't anything special enough to make an individual a target, So the motivation simply doesn't arise.

It may be that it is more difficult for young Black Men to amass the arsenal of semi automatic weapons hat seems to be the tool of trade for these sorts of shooting (Handguns may be more easily obtained, but I suspect AR type weapons less so) so, as the gun control proponents claim, it may be less common simply because it is harder to kill lots of people at one time. It may well be that Black school shootings do occur but only kill one or two at a time and so do not get given much attention.

But finding out why Black communities (Despite experiencing far higher levels of violent crime overall) do not tend to experience these sorts of murderous rampages might well be very helpful in working out how to reduce the likelihood of them happening in the future.
 
ianh said:
It seems people are more caught up in the hype about "removing guns" but doing little about finding the root cause as to "why" white male students keep doing this. If all the guns are gone then the root cause will still be there and people will find other ways to cause carnage, so shouldn't getting rid of the root cause also be a very high priority?
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Obama has stated that the CDC have been blocked from even collecting data on shootings, let alone investigate why they happen. The gun lobby are so paranoid they would rather see dead children than gun restrictions that may require some amendment to their Constitution - it's absurd.
 
enkoda said:
Obama has stated that the CDC have been blocked from even collecting data on shootings, let alone investigate why they happen. The gun lobby are so paranoid they would rather see dead children than gun restrictions that may require some amendment to their Constitution - it's absurd.
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A Islamic Terrorist tries to blow up a plane with a bomb concealed in his shoe. Unsuccessfully I might add, and shoes now need to go through the X-Ray scanner. For your safety.

An Islamic terrorist tries to blow up a plane using a 'liquid bomb' made up of liquid chemicals. He fails and now travellers are limited as to how much liquid they can carry on flights. For your safety.


On April 20th 1999 Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold enter Columbine High School gun down 12 students and 1 teacher. Nothing is done.
On April 16th 2007 Seung-Hui Cho kills 33 people and injures 23 at Virginia Tech university. Nothing is done.
Adam Lanza takes a Semi-automatic rifle and a handgun to Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 12th 2012 and kills 20 children and 6 adult staff members. Nothing is done.
On October 1st 2015 26-year-old student Christopher Harper-Mercer opens fire in a communal area of Umpqua Community College Oregon killing 9 and injuring 8 more. Still nothing is done. But many offer thoughts and prayers.
On February 14th 2018 Dylan Cruz enters Majorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida armed with a Semi-automatic Rifle and proceeds to kill 17 people and injure 14 more. Only by the action of CHILDREN does it appear something might be done. It shouldn't be up to children to be pushing these changes. Adults are supposed to protect Children.

These are JUST the school/University shootings. There have been many more instances of mass murder with guns. Only in October last year did 57 people go to a concert and get gunned down by Stephen Paddock using a Semi-automatic rifle modified with a 'Bump Stock' giving it the ability to fire rapidly, far beyond it's design parameters. STILL nothing is done.

The hypocrisy is astounding, breath-taking and shocking in it's absurdity.
 
enkoda said:
Obama has stated that the CDC have been blocked from even collecting data on shootings, let alone investigate why they happen. The gun lobby are so paranoid they would rather see dead children than gun restrictions that may require some amendment to their Constitution - it's absurd.
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The ATF are even banned from using a computer database for checking records of gun sales.

Instead they have to either go through paper copies from the dealer when tracing a weapon, all the records from that dealer (IIRC they're not even allowed to use a computer to help sort by year), or if they're lucky they may have the records scanned in on the computer and "just" have to look at the scanned images rather than go through containers and warehouses of paper records.
Apparently in a rush they can if needed find a record of a gun sale within a day or so.
There are pictures of the ATF facility where they do the searches for the records and it's like something from the 70's with boxes of documentation floor to ceiling in hallways, and shipping containers in the car park because they need them accessible but can't put them on a computer or get the budget to move to a building with more storage.

Due to the NRA the ATF are using a record keeping system that is worse than my school had in '91 for it's catalogue, and worse than the index card system I remember from middle school in the 80's.

It's insane the level of power the NRA have over the US government.
 
Werewolf said:
The ATF are even banned from using a computer database for checking records of gun sales.

Instead they have to either go through paper copies from the dealer when tracing a weapon, all the records from that dealer (IIRC they're not even allowed to use a computer to help sort by year), or if they're lucky they may have the records scanned in on the computer and "just" have to look at the scanned images rather than go through containers and warehouses of paper records.
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AFAIK they have microfilm... like some 70s/80s library. But yeah it is absolute madness.
 
Rroff said:
It won't - but maybe it will make steps towards actual action that will. Most AR-15 type weapons owned in the US are not assault rifles or assault type weapons (obviously you knew that).
[..]
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I didn't know that and I still don't know that because "assault style weapon" is a meaningless term.

When the NRA et alia say that pretty much every restriction is intended to lead to ever more restrictions...they're right. As you say yourself, the point is to make steps towards further action. Salami style - a slice at a time. It's probably the most effective tactic, but I dislike the inherent dishonesty of it.
 
Angilion said:
I didn't know that and I still don't know that because "assault style weapon" is a meaningless term.
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Yeah, I guess while people can no doubt conjure up an image of what everyone generally means by that term... i.e. an AR15 type rifle or AK variant or equivalent military style rifle - actually defining the term objectively and trying to construct some legislation to outlaw only those kinds of rifles requires some rather arbitrary rules - things like magazine capacity, regulations concerning the flash suppressor etc.. (AFAIK some states have these sorts of rules) - of course what you then get is some manufacturers then creating AR15 style variants to fit within the legal requirements, modifying the flash suppressor, only supplying say 20 round magazines or whatever...

realistically any semi-automatic rifle, for the purpose of a mass shooting like this, could be used in the same way as what we generally perceive to be an "assault rifle" and that includes weapons that don't necessarily look like what we generally perceive to be "assault rifles" but perhaps more like traditional hunting rifles with a wooden stock etc...

So they're left with trying to create some arbitrary laws to ban rifles based partly on how they look in order to crack down on these military style rifles and which will no doubt be worked around in order to still sell them. The alternative of banning all semi-automatic rifles in general would likely not be politically feasible, suddenly that makes grandad's old hunting rifle illegal etc.. given the number of voters who own those sorts of weapons over there it would be political suicide - so I guess they've just got to go down the half baked, looking like they're doing something path and try to gradually move to tighter and tighter regulations... which as you've pointed out the NRA can see right through and thus is opposed to almost anything that would tighten gun laws.
 
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