Y’all are too busy shooting each other for crack money to stare into the abyss of insanity.
People take comfort in the cowboy fantasy, but it is neither practical nor probable.
It brings unnecessary danger into the home, but meh. Whatev.
It is wrong to kill animals for sport. It is not wrong to shoot holes in an inanimate target, but refer to my earlier response to collecting.
Irresponsibly lax, but that’s what happens when you’re in the one purple state in the union that has guns up the yin yang.
Why is “do you” emphasized instead of “know”? Seems like that would make more sense.
Fatalities in mass shootings have almost tripled since the expiration of the assault weapons ban. While I am not in favor of banning guns, I would lose no sleep whatsoever if the capacity of mags was clamped down. Way down.
It is funny to me that the solution to a lot of the problems people have with guns can be solved the same way a lot of problems can be solved-- With education and a proper discussion that leads to understanding.
Of course, since this is humanity we’re talking about, it will continue because most people seem to not want to learn or understand anything.
Or y’know, parents could start doing their damn jobs and raising these kids and taking them to counseling and shit when they show signs of dangerous behavior…
Amongst others. And, if you accept the data put forward by Kleck, there several million incidents per year where guns are used defensively by lawful citzens.
I see. Thanks for the tip. I was asking because I’d heard the statistic before and wasn’t sure if it was legit or not. It would seem to follow that if the shooting was stopped before it started, it would be difficult to determine whether or not it would have been a mass shooting otherwise.
I do not own a gun. I only recently got over my fear of them (due to being introduced to them in a traumatic way as a child). I think a weapon holding 30 rounds is excessive for every day carry. If your hobby is shooting them that is a different story.
PA has done rather lenient gun laws http://www.pafoa.org/law
When I was briefly involved with cease fire pa, there was a woman who wanted to openly carry her gun to children soccer games. This was not in Philadelphia, she lived in the “better” area of Pennsylvania.
As you can see the law is only hard on concealed weapons, which is probably why she wanted to carry her gun openly during the games; but just because you have the right to do something like that, it doesn’t make it appropriate.
I don’t feel anything toward the term “assault weapon”.
depends on the definition, I guess. typically a “mass shooting” requires four victims, but really, any shooting in a crowded area like a school can become a technical “mass shooting” in a matter of seconds. It just takes another two taps of the trigger.
I mean, sure, there’s not many examples of the shooters going down AFTER a big killing spree, but that makes sense. The aim is to stop shit from going too far once its started - nobody in their right mind would let the shooter just keep gunning people down if they had a clear shot.
Several of those were by off duty police officers and in nearly every one of them people were killed anyway. Furthermore, how do we determine if something would have been a mass shooting if it never even began? Lastly, perhaps many of these incidents wouldn’t have taken place had the perpetrators not have been able to obtain the guns so easily. The biggest thing is that the gun-carrying civilians did not stop the crimes from occurring in the first place.
It takes a lot of skill and training to react in such a situation and police officers go through this training for a very long time. From that, it should be rather obvious that the average civilians doesn’t have these skills or training and is hence unfit to be relied upon in such a situation.
You can bring up whatever list you want, but it still doesn’t change the fact there are still far and away more gun-related homicides and crimes in the US than in countries like France and England where gun control is much more strict. Perhaps there is no need for gun-carrying civilians to play the hero because these incidents don’t occur with such frequency when so many people don’t have guns. The simple fact that gunmen aren’t feasting on unarmed citizens in countries that don’t allow guns while the number of gun related homicides are still far higher in the US in spite of the citizens walking around concealed weapons should make it pretty obvious that giving people the chance to play the hero is not the answer. Why the huge disparity? Why does the US still have 10,000 people every year killed in gun-related homicides whereas the aforementioned countries don’t even get close despite the lack of heroics by gun-carrying civilians?
In most of those examples, the shooting DID begin.
Being an off-duty police officer is irrelevant. Most police officers will never have to discharge their firearm in their entire career, let alone intervene out of uniform. Carrying while off-duty is optional and many citizens can are more accurate and skilled with their firearms than LEOs.
I would rather have an armed citizen be watching out for me than wait for police to arrive. By that time, I could be dead.
It is also not a requirement of a police officer to carry off-duty. Some of those shootings were by off-duty cops, some were retired cops, some were responsible citizens. In several of these cases, there were multiple victims before the shooter was taken down.
Citizens are not psychic and they are not police officers. You cannot expect people to anticipate crime before it begins.
Look, I’m all for SOME form of gun control and regulation, but there comes a point where human behaviour has to take the blame. The majority of gun related deaths however, are suicides.
Take my own country for example - we restricted guns in 1996, but violent crime INCREASED overall (reference http://www.aic.gov.au/statistics/violent%20crime.html). Gun use in crime reduced, but assault, rape and murder all increased after gun restrictions were put in place. If you take away guns, people will just find other things to kill people with.
The question is not “how do we reduce gun violence”, it’s “how do we reduce violence”.
Gun ownership is not a human right. Self-defense however, is. Remember - I’m not American: Before anyone pulls the Constitution out and waves it around here - don’t bother, it means nothing to me.
Apologies, I rephrase that to “nobody who has already chosen to take action would let the shooter just keep gunning people down”. Totally understand not everybody is able step up to the plate in these horrific events. You never know how you will perform.
‘How do we stop violence’ is the same as the aim you propose.
Most burglaries occur when people are not at home so having a gun would make no difference. Burglars make it a point to show up when no one is home because they don’t want a confrontation.
That’s my point. The shootings still occurred in spite of people carrying concealed weapons.
It’s not irrelevant because a) it makes sense for a police officer to have a gun even when off duty and b) police officers are trained to handle those sitations. It is not just a matter of being skilled with a firearm. There’s more to it than just pulling out a gun and shooting someone. Pulling the trigger is the smallest part of the equation.
What you would rather have does not change the fact that armed citizens aren’t trained to handle those situations nor does it change the fact the disparity between the US and other nations that don’t allow guns remains in spite of these “heroics”.
So again, you admit that, ultimately, the gun-carrying civilians aren’t really having much of an effect.
Still doesn’t change anything that I’ve said. A whole hell of a lot of them are indeed homicides and perhaps there would be less of both if it wasn’t so easy to get guns.
That’s not the point. It’s still far less than what it is in the US and I really doubt that a ban on guns caused more people to be raped.
Btw, you might want to link directly to the figures instead of just linking to the home page.
You can also see from that same website that while homicides increased in the year following the gun ban, the number of homicides today is noticeably lower than what it was before the ban was in place.
And perhaps such defense wouldn’t be needed if more of that gun control that you just said you support were in effect and these situations didn’t occur to begin with.
My point was that these other countries also have violent gangs. The Yakuza are certainly just as dangerous as any gang in the US but Japan still doesn’t even get close to the number of gun-related homicides.
