A seamless background check system would have prevented the mass shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Washington. The shooter got the guns from his father who was not supposed to be allowed to purchase fire arms due to a domestic violence restraining order. Because that was issued in tribal court and there is not a seamless interface between jurisdictions he was able to walk into Cabela’s and purchase guns.
I don’t believe that any one measure will stop all of these tragedies but the NRA and their defenders want to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Each loophole that is closed will make things better. Even more importantly we need to change the attitudes and rhetoric that MORE guns are the answer. More guns = more stolen guns in the hands of criminals. More guns = more innocent bystanders shot by “good guys with guns”. More guns = more suicides. More guns = more toddlers shooting themselves and their siblings. It goes on and on.
We could implement the same laws they have in Australia for a start. For the life of me I don’t understand what gun owners are afraid of if we had stricter requirements. The only conclusion I reach is that they care way more about their guns then they do people’s lives.
SCOTUS said guns can be regulated. An often “forgotten” part of the recent SCOTUS decision interpreting the Second Amendment:
“Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions on the commercial sale of arms.”
Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in Heller.
I went back and glanced through the thread. I agree that study by the CDC should not be blocked.
Better background checks does not seem to me to be a problem. Most of these situations involve guns that were purchased by people who would have passed stricter checks though.
I don’t understand the logic in the argument that universal background checks will prevent law abiding citizens from purchasing guns. If you are law abiding you would skate through the background check. How is that a threat to liberty?
For one thing - one easy, stupid, thing - let’s make “private” gun sales and gun sales at gun fairs subject to local and federal background checks. Right now, they aren’t!
If there’s a gun fair, and it would burden a business to wait 3 days to perform a background check on a prospective buyer, why doesn’t that buyer get the background check done first? Like we all do with credit ratings before signing a lease or being pre approved for a mortgage? Buyer shows up with a piece of paper and seller only has to verify it by computer or telephone.
Here’s a second stupid, easy, thing - liability. You lose a gun and don’t report it to police and later it’s used in a crime? Lawsuits. And criminal charges. That should make people be a little more careful.
As mentioned up thread, I see no reason for any civilian to own a gun or a clip that allows firing more than a couple of shots without reloading. I’d ban their purchase and use, and institute a buyback program.
As a gun owner, I don’t see it as a big deal to impose some reasonable limits to gun sales. But as a cynic, I’m just skeptical about whether new laws will make a difference in the frequency of mass shootings.
The dilemma is that the guns are ALREADY out there in circulation in huge numbers. And what has changed in the equation in the last decade is the proliferation of social media. Twisted minded people are able to meet similarly twisted people on chat boards who give their grievances legitimacy.
What increasingly worries me is not the mentally ill with guns, but terrorism on soft targets. Radical islam doesn’t need to execute complex plots (e.g., crashing hijacked airliners) to wreak terror. Witness the increasing number of overseas gun attacks on soft targets: shopping malls, hotels, beach, trains, theaters, cafes, schools. These attacks occur in countries w strict gun laws.
Frankly, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more terrorism attempts on schools in the US-- easy sitting ducks. My kids used to go to international school overseas. The school grounds were fenced with razor wire. School guards were armed. Visitors were security screened. Cars were searched for weapons & explosives, including a mirror-search of the car’s undercarriage. That’s normal to me.
Names of the victims: Lucero Alcaraz, 19, Rebecka Ann Carnes, 18, Quinn Cooper, 18, Treven Taylor Anspach, 20, Sarena Dawn Moore, 44; Professor Lawrence Levine, 67, Lucas Eibel, 18, Kim Saltmarsh Dietz, 59, and Jason Dale Johnson, 34.
Here is a synopsis of the gun laws in Oz instituted only 12 days after the massacre in Port Arthur. Also what the UK did after a mass murder in the late 80’s and even stricter laws after Dunblane.
The gunman in Parramatta only shot one person and only took one shot. There is no evidence he continued shooting after he killed the police officer. He also did not have mutliple weapons or multiple rounds of ammunition on his person, unlike mass murderers in the U.S. That incident is in no way comparable to mass murders in the U.S.
If that happened in the U.S. it wouldn’t make anything other then the local news in the town/city it happened in let alone an above the fold headline in newspapers.
“Oh really??? This just in TODAY in Australia. If an armed person hadn’t stopped this shooter, there’d be even more victims.”
The armed person was a “special constable” probably what we would think of as a Swat team member. He wasn’t stopped by a citizen carrying a gun.
"The dilemma is that the guns are ALREADY out there in circulation in huge numbers. And what has changed in the equation in the last decade is the proliferation of social media. Twisted minded people are able to meet similarly twisted people on chat boards who give their grievances legitimacy
Australia, to be clear and HONEST, has had no mass shootings of strangers, which is what people generally mean by “mass shootings”. The has been one school shooting, which was linked to: Monash, 2 dead, guy shot the people in his econometrics class. Same person linked to Hectorville: guy shot his neighbors. That’s not the kind of thing being talked about. People will kill people they know. That’s always been true and always will be true. The main issue is killing lots of strangers and the secondary issue is shootings in schools.
And the shooting today - noted in #187 - was a terror attack, a kid (apparently from Iraq or Iran - sources disagree) who just came from a mosque and was chanting “Allah, Allah” as he murdered a police employee who was leaving the police station. Not at all the same kind of shooting.
Should we have licenses to drive? Access to a car is really easy, and any determined 15 year old could just take a semi tanker full of gasoline. Clearly the need for a driver’s license is worthless, and making people have drivers licenses just puts more unlicensed people behind the wheel. Also, we shouldn’t require liability insurance to drive on public roads. That is the logic, right?
If your conclusion is indeed correct, then I think there is a rational basis for it.
Most (sane) gun owners understand that their guns will never stroll on over to shoot up the local community college some random morning. People, on the other hand, aren’t near as trustworthy or predictable. You never know what they might do.