Didn’t he buy amo online? Maybe I’m mistakine or conflating his case with Santa Barbara guy. DV is domestic violence. MVP HS dad and the latest guy both had DV legal issues that should have kept them from legally purchasing a gun. In the local to me case it was a reporting issue and the latest prevented him from getting a concealed carry permit but not from purchasing the weapon.
So, @Dragonflygarden --How would you propose that we slow down the rate of gun massacres? Given that these guys all get their guns legally.
Houser also had DV issues, saintfan . In fact his family had a restraining order at some point. No matter, just as long as his second amendment rights were intact.
Yep - I think I just called him “the latest guy” . . . D. Roof also had legal troubles which should have prevented him from purchasing a gun but a couple “clerical errors” made it possible.
Oh well.
We have a lot of attention on adult deaths, but where is the national attention on deaths of young children?
Often at the hands of their mothers/fathers, or other caretakers?
They arent isolated incidents, anymore than the gun deaths are.
He bought the gun in Phenix City, AL which is across the river from where he’d previously lived (and IIRC where he was living when he was psychiatrically committed) in Columbus. One can easily walk across the bridge from Columbus to Phenix City.
Why is it okay to deny the mentally ill person their right to own a gun? Is there any proof the mentally ill commit more crimes using a gun than any other population of people?
So start a thread on child deaths. I promise I won’t go into it and complain about how you should be talking about this. Maybe I’ll even discuss the actual topic.
I’ve driven through the area he was from. So I wax aware it’s basically one community.
As I said, it’s unclear why he ended up in Lafayette at all. It seems he’d been traveling around some. He’s been in Lafayette since early July. They think he made atkeats one visit to Lake Charles, which is about an hour west picking targets, maybe?
They think he chose Thursday night because the theater has police offices on duty on weekends. And he was clearly planning to escape,maybe to do it again. Fortunately there were police officers on patrol very nearby (essentially next door I think) so they were able to get there Ina minute or less.
I happened to be IN that community last weekend, and looked at one city from across the banks of the river of the other. Its an easy walk across the bridge. Many raft down the river in that area from either side of the banks of the river. Yes the community is small and events in one town are well known in the other, even if technically they are in different states.
There was something on the news this morning about Houser trying recently to barter mowing a lawn at a Cracker Barrel in exchange for a meal, but I can’t find it. He’d been staying at a Motel 6 in Lafayette. He chose a theater where he could park his car near an exit, and Jindal is saying (watching now) that he may have been in other theaters in South Louisiana before this one.
As I type, the funeral for the youngest victim of the Chattanooga marine recruiting office is set to begin in a few hours just up the road a bit. I atrtended a funeral at that very military cemetary just 2 weeks ago. A relative’s significant other (they’d been together fro many years) was killed by a former disgruntled employee in Minnesota a few years ago. This stuff is too close/personal for some of us. It has to stop.
Yeah, I think I read that he was in a theater in Lake Charles. I live in Louisiana so this one is close to home for me. I grew up in LC actually.
I spent a night in Columbus in s road trip years ago. Silly, but I chose it to stop because then I’d start drive go the next day and be in another state right away.
Its likely there are just a few degrees of separation from these tragedies for many of us. Sandy Hook, Tucson, Charlotte, Chattanooga, Lafayette, Aurora, Columbine, etc. This is a fascinating article http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map SHowing that the vast majority of shooters in these cases obtained their guns legally
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Why is it okay to deny the mentally ill person their right to own a gun? Is there any proof the mentally ill commit more crimes using a gun than any other population of people?
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Yes, and the second amendment doesn’t specifically say anything about denying the mentally ill their gun rights. So if we’re going to be literalists – sorry, originalists – then the mentally ill are just as entitled to a gun as anyone else is.
So, what’s the difference? If a person can’t get a legal gun, do you think they…just give up?
If you are the victim of a shooting, does it make a difference as to whether the gun was legally or illegally obtained?
Would you know how to get an illegal gun? I certainly wouldn’t; I don’t think it’s necessarily so easy for the average person who isn’t a career criminal.
It makes a difference to the parents of the little children killed at Sandy Hook, who have pushed for sensible, effective gun control.
I have never tried to obtain one illegally so my knowledge is only what I read in the NOLA papers but from that I have gleaned a few things . . .
If you know the right people an illegal gun seems to be quite easy to get
If you don’t know the right people you meet with the wrong people and they steal your money but don’t give you the gun
Illegal weapons passed hand to hand or “borrowed” from a friend or relative tend to be straight up “throw away” hand guns and are less likely to be semi-automatic, less likely to be the military style weapons and less likely to have large clips.
Illegal weapons seem to be the weapon of choice for carjackings, armed robbery and shooting your rivals in the leg but do not seem to be the weapon of choice for mass shootings that aren’t motivated by economics or gang activity.
This is not to imply that those types of crimes are not significant, just that the perps, victims and weapons seem to follow different patterns and in this thread we are talking about pre-meditated mass shootings of the “lone gunman” variety.
I would also say that the way is certainly smoothed for people to obtain weapons legally who should not have them. Again, in the most recent case that was close to my home a teen took weapons from his dad who should not have been able to purchase them due to domestic violence issues but a reporting loophole made it possible for the dad to walk into Cabela’s and buy the guns. It is seems unlikely to me that the kid would have purchased the guns illegally on his own. Maybe he still would have, but there would have been some pretty significant barriers.
If you get denied for a weapon purchase through NICS, the first stop for many gun owner wanna-bes is a face to face purchase. It’s sometimes called a “private sale”. Private citizens can sell a gun without really checking whether the recipient is “allowed” to buy one or not.
@oldmom4896 Could you tell me what the difference is? As I understand it, the weapons used at Sandy Hook were legally purchased. Has some gun control been passed that would have prevented that massacre?
My basic question still remains and nobody here or amongst the anti-sensible measures lobby seem to address it directly:
Even if we start from the place the “law-abiding citizens” should not have their access to fire arms impeded in any way, how is that impacted by a seamless national system that keeps those who are not “law-abiding” from accessing weapons legally?
The only answer that I ever hear is that those people have proven that they are law breakers so they will get guns illegally anyway. That is just a cop out. There are people who almost everyone would agree should not be able to legally purchase guns. Keeping them from purchasing legally does not guarantee that they will be able to purchase and/or have the will and initiative to purchase whatever they want on the street or through other black market sources.
So if you have a gun that was a registered purchase and has a recorded serial number and you sell it in a personal sale to a random guy with no check maybe the families of people who random guy kills with the gun you sold him should be able to come after you with a wrongful death suit. Not that I think that will ever happen, but what if it could?