Incomprehensible mass shooting happens again

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TheVrolok

Lifer
Dec 11, 2000
24,254
4,076
136
I really like Australia's approach:


Guns are fun as a hobby or for hunting or collecting, but there's no reason to own an automatic or a semi-automatic weapon, especially like you said, how it really has no place in society these days. Although handguns have the highest usage rate in mass shootings:


It's very tricky. I know people who have guns from like the Civil War. You can 3D print guns these days. Black market guns are apparently pretty easy to come by. Full eradication seems difficult, but curbing it like Australia did seems to have helped. Easy problem to solve in theory, super tricky problem to solve in practice.

If I could, I'd outlaw (or at least much more highly regulate - class 3 stamp/NFA, etc) all semi autos and handguns other than specifically designed revolvers.
 

GoPackGo

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 2003
6,414
468
126
Tens of thousands of deaths is the price a free society must pay in order to ensure that citizens have the ability to go hunting and occasionally kill a family member or themselves.
Shouldn't every mass shooting be a cause for celebration?
 

Muse

Lifer
Jul 11, 2001
37,402
8,038
136
Tens of thousands of deaths is the price a free society must pay in order to ensure that citizens have the ability to go hunting and occasionally kill a family member or themselves.
And anybody else they please, and remember, in this country (as Kevin McBoingBoing reminded us last week, everybody "is innocent until proven guilty" (he was talking about that lying SOB GOP congressman George Santos from Long Island). Of course, if you suicide after your homicides, they don't bother trying you so "move on, nothing to see here..."
 

Paratus

Lifer
Jun 4, 2004
16,613
13,296
146
Tens of thousands of deaths is the price a free society must pay in order to ensure that citizens have the ability to go hunting and occasionally kill a family member or themselves.
Actually I think a big one is to be able to continue daydreaming about being the hero.


Some of these folks start dreaming about being the hero as kids and I don’t think that dream changes much into adulthood with the exception of getting a BJ from their (real or imagined) SO for saving the day.
 
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HomerJS

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
35,959
27,639
136
Gavin Newsome rips Fox News a new one on their coverage of mass shootings and their propaganda MO.
“It’s a disgrace what they say, what these people say every single night,” Newsom told reporters about prime-time personalities on the conservative Rupert Murdoch-owned channel.

“There’s xenophobia, they’re racial priming, what they have done to perpetuate crime and violence in this country, by scapegoating, and by doing not a damn thing about gun safety, not a damn thing for decades,” he continued.

“‘It’s not the right time, not the right time, not the right time.’ Rinse, repeat. ‘Not the right time, rinse repeat, Sandy Hook, not the right time, rinse, repeat. Uvalde.’ Remember Uvalde? Remember? Rinse, repeat. You don’t remember the Borderline here, 13 people, that was a few years ago, you’ll have to look that one up. Rinse, repeat. Not a damn thing they do. And we know it. And we allow them to get away with that.”
Gavin Newsom Hits Fox News With Some Hard Truths About Its Mass Shooting Coverage | HuffPost Latest News
 

dawp

Lifer
Jul 2, 2005
11,345
2,705
136
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Ajay

Lifer
Jan 8, 2001
15,332
7,792
136
There is some sort of bizarre pathology sweeping American culture. It's too bad we don’t have a government agency that is capable of studying pathological problems in the population. 🙄
 
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Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
48,387
5,255
136
It's difficult for me to get my head around the amount of people killed by gunfire in the USA. If we get one shooting it's major news country wide for a fortnight.
Any way to get a bit of context I tried googling some numbers of people shot so far in 2023 and this website came up....

American deaths get even weirder when you look at the statistics! I did my high school senior research paper on car safety back in the day...the number of people we lose in car accidents EVERY YEARS is absolutely STAGGERING! In 2021, we lost an estimated 42,915 people in America alone!


The solution to mitigating literally tens of thousands of deaths was pretty simple:

1. Require seat belts, airbags, and crumple zones on all roadworthy vehicles. Government buyback of old models like Cash 4 Clunkers.
2. Limit maximum speeds to 20 MPH. A head-on collision at a combined 40 MPH with safety equipment is largely survivable.
3. Require a breathalyzer device test for the driver for start the vehicle, as 25% of ALL traffic fatalities are a direct result of alcohol impairment.

So why not implement it & save FORTY THOUSAND LIVES per year EVERY year!? To quote Heath Ledger's Joker character:

“I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hmmm? You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds. Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I'm an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It's fair!”

The problem is that it requires change:

1. Enough people don't care enough
2. The economic cost would be pretty bad
(cross-country road trips, semi-truck trips, etc.)

With guns:

1. People don't want to give up their guns, even if it's just the semi-automatic ones like Australia, which would statistically put a large dent in the annual fatality numbers
2. The U.S. firearm industry contributes over $50 billion annually to the American economy

It's hard to create real change when people don't want to change & when the government isn't forcing anyone to do so. Also, the statistics get murky. "The U.S. accounts for nearly 46% of all civilian-held firearms in the world", however, "mass shootings committed with assault weapons draw national media attention, those crimes are quite rare", as "people who die in mass shootings represent a small fraction of the number who die from gun injuries in the U.S.":


Statistically:

* "In 2020, 45,222 people died from injuries caused by firearms, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."
* "Most gun deaths — 54% in 2020 — are suicides."
* "Almost 43% of people killed by guns in 2020 were homicide victims."

Quote:

* “What makes guns the most common mode of suicide in this country? The answer: They are both lethal and accessible,” writes Madeline Drexler, editor of Harvard Public Health and the report’s author.

This is a good article on what the research says about gun buybacks:

* https://journalistsresource.org/health/gun-buybacks-what-the-research-says/

In America, we have more guns (393+ million) than people (331+ million):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership

Throw in vintage unregistered weapons, "ghost guns" (ex. homemade 3D-printed guns), illegal weapons from over the border, etc. & it becomes an incredibly difficult problem to solve, especially when the country remains so divided on gun control opinions:


Very difficult problem to solve in practice. I don't see a clear solution that will unite everyone in the near future & actually work in realistic practice unfortunately. Hopefully they will figure something out because mass shootings are intolerable!
 
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Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
48,387
5,255
136
Columbine High was a watershed moment. Two students working together to terrorize their high school with guns designed to kill humans in mass. They upped the ante in the mass murder go-out-with-a-bang game.

On April 20, 1999, a school shooting and attempted bombing occurred at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States.[a] The perpetrators, 12th grade students Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold, murdered 12 students and one teacher. Ten students were killed in the school library, where Harris and Klebold subsequently committed suicide. Twenty-one additional people were injured by gunshots, and gunfire was also exchanged with the police. Another three people were injured trying to escape. At the time, it was the deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history, until the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre#cite_note-5 The shooting has inspired dozens of copycat killings, dubbed the Columbine effect, including many deadlier shootings across the world.[c] The word "Columbine" has become a byword for school shootings.

Wikipedia

It's not just about the direct impact, either. My buddy is a Columbine survivor & he's still pretty messed up to this day, nearly 25 years later, all because two kids chose to inflict violence on others. All of the schools around here now do active shooter training just like they do with fire drills. We need to patch the timeline fork & go back to where kids don't have to learn to hide from shooters :confused:
 
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pmv

Lifer
May 30, 2008
12,972
7,889
136
1. Require seat belts, airbags, and crumple zones on all roadworthy vehicles. Government buyback of old models like Cash 4 Clunkers.

Out of interest, is there a legal obligation to actually _wear_ seatbelts in the US?

Pretty sure I've seen pictures of Trump in the back of that Limo (apparently called "The Beast") without a seatbelt on - has a President ever been fined for that?

 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
68,850
26,632
136
Out of interest, is there a legal obligation to actually _wear_ seatbelts in the US?

Pretty sure I've seen pictures of Trump in the back of that Limo (apparently called "The Beast") without a seatbelt on.

Most states require seat belt use. In some states, lack of seat belt use can’t be used as cause to stop a motorist but can be an add on ticket during a traffic stop for other reasons.
 

HomerJS

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
35,959
27,639
136
Very difficult problem to solve in practice. I don't see a clear solution that will unite everyone in the near future & actually work in realistic practice unfortunately. Hopefully they will figure something out because mass shootings are intolerable!
A very difficult problem is curing cancer. It's not difficult at all. Other countries have already done it.

That's like saying "the pile of leaves in my yard is a difficult problem" when your neighbors have already raked theirs.
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
48,387
5,255
136
If I could, I'd outlaw (or at least much more highly regulate - class 3 stamp/NFA, etc) all semi autos and handguns other than specifically designed revolvers.

It's difficult because then what do you do about illegal guns? One of my friends was murdered last year by one of his friends, who had an illegally-obtained street gun. His friend is in jail forever now & my friend is gone because of gun violence. I don't even have a clue how we would stop something like that, because his friend didn't go through legal channels to get his personal weapon, so there's still the issues of the black market to worry about.

But it's not a monolithic discussion...I do like the idea of a ban & buyback of specific weapons, because like adding crumble zones, seatbelts, active braking, airbags, etc. to cars, it would help curb & reduce the impact of guns on the general population. The idea is easy (get rid of guns) but actually getting things done in real life is so much harder, unfortunately!
 
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Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
48,387
5,255
136
A very difficult problem is curing cancer. It's not difficult at all. Other countries have already done it.

That's like saying "the pile of leaves in my yard is a difficult problem" when your neighbors have already raked theirs.

The problem here isn't the act itself of doing it, it's the realistic execution of the task of doing it in practice in real life: the right to bear arms, the unwillingness of people to change, the monolithic worldviews where we can't at least curb things by getting rid of things like semi-automatic weapons, etc. We've had 20+ years since Columbine to figure this out, but it's kind of like COVID...a lot of people don't want to mask, don't want to get the vaccine, and so we just put up with a million people dying, whereas other countries that got their act together had less than 2,500 COVID-related deaths.

It's sort of like how everyone owns an exercise machine like a stationary bike or elliptical, but actually using it from day to day is a LOT more difficult than simply having access to the equipment...actually using one daily to get in a shape, even though it's a simple task in practice, is waaaay harder in real life! With gun control, getting everyone to agree on a course of action, putting it into law, and then enforcing it is incredibly problematic in reality:

Illinois sheriff refuses to enforce new gun control law: ‘Clear violation of the 2nd Amendment’
 
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hal2kilo

Lifer
Feb 24, 2009
23,330
10,231
136
It's difficult because then what do you do about illegal guns? One of my friends was murdered last year by one of his friends, who had an illegally-obtained street gun. His friend is in jail forever now & my friend is gone because of gun violence. I don't even have a clue how we would stop something like that, because his friend didn't go through legal channels to get his personal weapon, so there's still the issues of the black market to worry about.

But it's not a monolithic discussion...I do like the idea of a ban & buyback of specific weapons, because like adding crumble zones, seatbelts, active braking, airbags, etc. to cars, it would help curb & reduce the impact of guns on the general population. The idea is easy (get rid of guns) but actually getting things done in real life is so much harder, unfortunately!
How about major jail time, like mandatory ten years.
 
Jul 27, 2020
15,742
9,809
106
How about major jail time, like mandatory ten years.
Jail time with hard labor. Then circulate pictures of bodies of prisoners to show everyone what happens to criminals when they have to break stones and have to feed on gruel 6 days a week and bread and cheese on 7th day and it's only 2500 calories max. Work them to death.
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
48,387
5,255
136
How about major jail time, like mandatory ten years.

Yeah, but taking one step back:

1. Anyone can get an illegal gun
2. Nobody would know you have it
3. By the time you use it, it's too late

This is one of the central questions in the Monterey Park shooting:

How do you ban something that is already illegal?

So at that point, a gun ban, a gun buyback, and jail time are only effective for legal sales & pre-mass-shooting events. But again, this isn't a monolithic discussion, so anything we can do to curb things would be great! Not only have we not made progress from Columbine, but things have gotten exponentially worse due to our inaction!