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3 comments:
What's your solution that would have stopped or hindered this shooter?
Based on all but one similar event that I'm aware of, I'm guessing that guns were banned in this building. As a result when a convicted felon decided to break the rules and laws yet again none of the decent people could do anything about it until someone who was allowed brought another gun. If instead we limited gun bans to real ones and stopped having honor system bans most of these incidents would at least be stopped sooner.
Can you find one case where a licensed civilian made a spree shooting worse?
It's not that I or anyone else has "a solution" to solving all shootings, all murders in the nation, no. I nor anyone in the nation or world don't/doesn't have one solution.
But we do know some things and there are things we can---and should---do.
For starters, we need to require, truly require, background checks for mental stability and criminal history for ALL weapons purchases. We need to do away with the loopholes that are out there, that we know exist, so all weapons purchases will be examined. It only makes sense. Plenty of people deny there are loopholes and plenty more will deny they'll have any effect but both are untrue. The loopholes exist and making these checks could and even would likely decrease the numbers of shootings and killings in the nation. To do less is deeply irresponsible.
Second---and here you'll flip out---we need to reduce the numbers of weapons in the nation. Insert screaming and kicking here.
This is less easy to do and I'm not even sure how we'd do it but it's clear we need to do this. It's proven, in study after study, that the more weapons there are, the more shootings and killings occur. It's statistical. It's a direct correlation. It only makes sense and our nation has more weapons than any other industrialized nation. It's insane. It's totally unnecessary and it's killing us at obscene rates.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-and-death/
It's not that I or anyone else has "a solution" to solving all shootings, all murders in the nation, no. I nor anyone in the nation or world don't/doesn't have one solution.
This sounds an awful lot like the the justification for the Patriot Act--Wouldn't do much or anything to stop the incident we are using as an excuse, but we can still use it to get what we wanted. If the news is right the convicted felon bought his guns completely illegally according to current law--no loophole, both buyer and seller were committing another felony. If all your side wants is making sure that legal sellers verify the legal status of buyers before selling, you can get that with a bit of compromise. That this compromise has been repeatedly opposed by gun control groups in general and you specifically explains a lot--what is really desired must logically be either universal gun registration or an extra tax on the second amendment.
I'm not sure there are any unbiased studies, best we can get are those that don't deceive all that much. One difference I've seen is that pro-gun studies are much more likely to make the data easy to find. The Harvard "studies" at your link give no links and almost no specifics, many of their conclusions are so obvious as to be silly--Batterers with a gun are more likely to use a gun than batterers without a gun. Others are so vague as to be useless--Is "more likely to" 0.1% or 500%? Unmentioned there (even to debunk) is the likelihood of a gun owner vs non-owner being a victim of battering, or herd immunity effects where a robber doesn't want to rob an armed person but doesn't research so he can't tell the difference between you and me. There's almost nothing to judge accuracy by except "trust us, we're from Harvard"...and there are pro-gun Harvard studies, or at least neutral (gun laws don't change crime rates). Yes there are negatives to gun ownership both culturally and individually--but outweighed by the positives. Most gun owners acknowledge the existence of negatives, most anti gun people will never acknowledge a positive. As I've said before, if you are going to use rare events like spree shootings to establish laws it is immoral to ignore that spree shootings invariably end at the very first armed resistance.
I want a world where weapons are completely unnecessary, where shooting is similar to archery, merely an anachronistic hobby. Giving up my guns, or even all legitimate gun owners giving up all their guns won't make that happen any sooner. This is especially true with 3d printers capable of making a gun good enough for most criminal purposes available about the same price as a single mid-grade handgun.
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