Mass shooting in Buffalo NY. (3 Viewers)

I do agree that there are other factors with a stronger effect on homicide than gun ownership. I never said otherwise. But the number of guns available and easy are also factors. For example, industrialized nations that ban guns do in fact have lower homicide rates than industrialized nations that don't.

I don't see why we have to follow only one course to improve things, or wait for a perfect solution to try something.

But unlike @brandon8283, I pretty much have given up on gun control. As a country we've decided cheap and easy guns are worth more than a few thousand deaths per year. I really don't care if you or @Semper or dozens of other reasonable people have a gun. But I do think it would be wise to make it harder and more expensive for there to be guns easily available.

I also think we should have more anti-poverty measures in place. I also think we should have stronger social safety nets. I also think we should encourage helping people instead of associating value with wealth.
Once again that is not true. That's the point I am making. There are plenty of countries that allow guns that don't have a higher homicide rate than those that don't
 
I guess that's kind of my point. Barring a complete change in the Supreme Court, to a version of the Court that has never existed, or a Constitutional Amendment repealing the 2nd Amendment which is also never going to happen, banning guns is never going to happen.
The Supreme Court is currently a version of the court that’s never existed. It can be achieved. It will take time.

The fact is that like it or not, the 2nd Amendment says what it says.
Yep. It says you have a right to bear arms. It doesn’t say you have a right to bear guns. Just like limits have been placed on the ability to own nukes (which are arms), limits could be placed on owning guns (which are also arms).
 
I'm all for strenous guidelines when purchasing a weapon. I don't even care if they make me wait a month while they check me out. But, how thorough would it be? How many mass shooting perpetrators have there been that didn't even qualify for owning a weapon? Felons at the top of that list. How many have been young men under 21 that didn't own a gun but used grandpa's or dad's? I also don't care if they take AR 15s off the public market. But, let's not use the term "semi-automatic" like it's the boogeyman. Don't make it sound like the person is out there with a Tommy gun just spraying lead everywhere. Lot's of weapons are semi-automatic, lot's of weapons aren't. I have a pump shotgun, not a semi-automatic, but you can still shoot it pretty fast. Make the laws for gun ownership stringent, make me jump thru hoops and wait a long time, fine with me. The only people who want one tomorrow, IMO, are the ones that are planning to do something stupid.
 
I don’t know if more expensive is the answer. More difficult is fine with me as well as maybe insurance. I carry a 2 million dollar policy for my firearms.
Yeah I think insurance might be part of the answer. The victims families in this shooting will most likely get nothing because the shooter doesn't have much assets.

If the shooter was required to carry liability insurance prior to owning a firearm, then maybe given his background insurance companies would refuse to insure him. This would make it impossible to legally buy a gun, which would make it harder for him to get his hands on one.

So the free market could maybe solve at least part of the issue here. They would probably want background investigations at minimum.

We do this for cars so I don't see any reason why guns couldn't fall into the same category.
 
Once again that is not true. That's the point I am making. There are plenty of countries that allow guns that don't have a higher homicide rate than those that don't

I don't think that's true comparing countries of similar poverty metrics. Could you point at these statistics?
 
I don’t know if more expensive is the answer. More difficult is fine with me as well as maybe insurance. I carry a 2 million dollar policy for my firearms.


would you be ok with "mandatory insurance" and if insurance lapses/cancels or expires without renewal, that/those firearms are subject to confiscation?


Reason being, someone will get a $1,000,000 liability policy and pay the first month then let cancel, but the proper notification has already been sent to "whomever"


While i agree about insurance, i just dont think it will do much to dissuade - after all its not "their" money in the event of a pay out.

It has to be tied to the owner somehow. Something drastic enough to make them at least think about the personal consequences outside of just prison/death. ( since in cases like this, neither seem to be a factor )


Shoot i have no idea other than the gun sale regulation or website regulation ...idk.
 
Kid made threats against his high school, has a mental evaluation and let go. Nobody followed up on this or kept tabs on him? At some point, we need to start throwing blame at the monitors. All the breadcrumbs were there, this should surprise nobody this dude was a ticking timebomb. Yes, everyone who makes threats against any school, business or a conglomerate of people should be watched very closely in this mass shooting climate we're existing in.
 
So I was basing this off of a comparison between UK's homicide rate and the US's. The US has a homicide rate of 7.8 per 100,000 while the UK has a homicide rate of 1 per 100,000.... so 8x lower. Now the UK is not a perfect substitute for the US, they have stronger social safety nets, and a more homogeneous society (although there is a fair amount of diversity, it's less than the US), and some of that no doubt contributes to the difference, so I said like 70% instead of 90%.
Do they have politicians and media that perpetuates division and hatred? Honestly asking . . . I don't know. This country certainly has division which is encouraged by the media and political factions - on both sides. This division and rhetoric often results in hatred, which breeds more hatred from competing groups, etc, etc, etc.

As for gun laws, I believe that there can be stronger emphasis on ensuring the wrong people don't get guns. Does that mean enforcing laws that are on the books? Making background checks stronger and consistent? Sure. I can get behind that.
Does everyone need a semi-automatic sporting rifle? Nah, I don't believe so. They are fun to shoot. But not very practical for home defense or hunting, etc.
Red flag laws . . . there would have be a very strong protection against the concept of it being used as a retribution tool type of thing. My view of red flag laws is that they don't offer very strong protections against due process property seizures. LOTS of opportunities for official abuse.
Registrations schemes don't work because if someone has a gun that isn't legal, registering it would violate his self-incrimination protections.

Shhh . . . don't tell my family or friends I said some of that.
 
How are you left with guns if you remove them?

It will take a lot of time and effort, but a gun buyback system, and making them illegal, will work to get both legal and illegal weapons off the streets. It's worked elsewhere. It will work here.

And even if you're left with a broken culture, you've made it much more difficult for the people in the broken culture to kill each other. That is important in and of itself.

Culture needs fixing, which will also take time. In the meantime, we need to triage the problem and stop the very literal bleeding before anything else.
Do you honestly believe that? Seems like a very naïve idea, if so.
 
Also, there needs to be some care in the interpretation of the constitution as it relates to the language and capabilities of the time period it was written. The internet was not considered when the first amendment was written and we can see how it has been abused over the years. It is used as a battering ram protecting all sorts of vileness these days.
 
Do you honestly believe that? Seems like a very naïve idea, if so.
Yes. Why is it naïve? Are we just forever doomed to gun violence in this country? It just is what it is?

Seems like a very fatalistic idea, if so.
 
i've never really found the argument very persuasive that people would find other ways to kill people if we got rid of guns, so there's no point in trying.
 
i've never really found the argument very persuasive that people would find other ways to kill people if we got rid of guns, so there's no point in trying.
Maybe, but, OKC bombing, Unabomber, Anthrax attacks, 9-11, Boston bumbing, cars running into crowds of people were all done without guns. Happens often enough.
 
The Supreme Court is currently a version of the court that’s never existed. It can be achieved. It will take time.


Yep. It says you have a right to bear arms. It doesn’t say you have a right to bear guns. Just like limits have been placed on the ability to own nukes (which are arms), limits could be placed on owning guns (which are also arms).

The current Court is about the same as the Court was prior to Roe v. Wade. Recall that prior versions of the Court ruled that black people were property. So, it's not unprecedented historically speaking. And the point of the Supreme Court isn't to have Judges that will vote one way or another based on specific issues. The point of it is to follow the law. Certainly the current Court, and really all prior versions didn't always do that, but that doesn't mean we should turn the Supreme Court into a referendum on one issue.

The current Court, right leaning though it is, normally doesn't just ignore the clear meaning of the Constitution which is what it would take to ban all guns with the 2nd Amendment in effect. To get that to happen, you have to do a lot more court stacking in ways the will risk other rights that you probably think are good ideas. The point of the Court is to protect rights no matter how unpopular they may be. And, frankly, if they are that unpopular, then there is a mechanism to amend the Constitution.

And, it's pretty clear that the intent of the 2nd Amendment was the type of arms that would make for an effective militia in the event that you need to call up citizens on short notice without time to equip them in the case of invasion. Which, at the time was a very real possibility, and how armies were more or less formed since there were usually very small, if any, standing armies in most countries. So, that would pretty much so rule out things like nukes as the types of arms protected. Clearly, that really isn't necessary anymore, but the Amendment is there until it is repealed.

Which I guess is why I have never understood why the idea of repealing the 2nd Amendment isn't more of a focus for people who are convinced that guns are the biggest contributor to our murder rate and rate of mass killings. It would be incredibly difficult to do, but it seems to me that it's really the only way that you are going to severely limit the number of guns in this country.
 
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