Awc, can you give me cites to a law that says that a CCP holder can’t be using a mood-altering drug like an antidepressant? And can you tell me how the sheriff, or whoever grants/withholds the permit, determines whether someone is using an antidepressant?
There was also a shooting at NAU which is a state college in Arizona.
Guns should be held only by police officers, military soldiers, and other government officials.
I have not a clue the specific law. If you are interested, I am sure you can find out the specifics in your state for a CCP. I am just citing what was on the forms I had to fill out at my local police department. I also had to give a doctor reference. There was a list of drugs that one cannot be using, similar to list for pilots.
As a side note, I would not put antidepressants all in same bag, as many pilots take antidepressants and are not deemed a danger to operation of aircraft and thus not a danger to people. There are also many doctors and school bus drivers who are on certain classes of antidepressants and are not deemed a danger to themselves or others.
The proof though is in the pudding, as they say - again, there is virtually zero issue with CCP holders going off the deep end. However, there are thousands upon thousands of cases were CCP holders saving themselves and other people under attack.
My point is, regardless of a specific state’s background check procedures for obtaining a CCP, which are all way more enhanced than federal background checks, the CCP permit approach definitely works. Therefore, just keeping whatever CCP guidelines a state has in place is really all that needs to be done - clearly people granted CCPs by their state have demonstrated that they are highly responsible.
Doing more to what is already being done at the CCP permit level for each state is pointless. The problem is people who should not have a gun at all, and current CCP procedures are extremely effective in catching those already. Thus, a proved " mental health problem" catching system is already in place in all the states, even if each state is slightly different in how it approaches the permit issuance.
You missed a group - somehow, I gather that criminals will not take heed to your “held only” prerogative.
Therefore, your list will automatically include: “police officers, military soldiers, and other government officials,” and criminals, a subset of which, interestingly enough, would also be members of the aforementioned three groups.
Thus, the people would not have any recourse against criminal government officials and the like, your standard criminal notwithstanding. Hum…I think I will pass on that.
I have been largely staying out of this one, but I did want to chime in on this. For background, let me state that I am a recreational shooter who has had one friend commit suicide by firearm and another commit a homicide by firearm - this is a subject that I have had to think about a lot and my own personal stance will probably anger everyone.
One of the most fundamental problems I see in these arguments is that most people who do not shoot do not really understand that the difference between a hunting rifle or revolver and the scariest “assault weapon” out there is tiny compared to the difference between any gun and no gun at all. If you look at the Columbine shooters, one of them went in with a 9mm carbine (that is a semiautomatic rifle that uses pistol cartridges) using 10-round magazines… and he fired twice as many rounds as his pal with the 28 to 52-round magazines.
And just to let you know, extended magazines are toys made aftermarket, and just about any semi-automatic firearm - pistol, rifle, carbine, whatever - can use them. Heck, I had an old squirrel gun (22LR) that I could right now purchase a 100-round drum magazine for. And most semi-auto pistols can get magazines so big that they are substantially larger and heavier than the actual firearm. I am not saying that the review you mention is a bad idea (without details, how can I say?), just letting you know that it would necessarily encapsulate ALL semi-automatic firearms.
This is where the details really start to matter.
Well, that is about 2 seconds per shot. If you fired at the leisurely pace of 1 shot per second, using 10 round magazines, that would allow you 5 seconds per magazine change, not much of a stress in my experience (which, admittedly, has not been in any kind of active shooting). I don’t think that the magazine size was a substantial factor in his rate of fire.
I think the venue had as much to do with the casualty count as anything else.
First, you clearly have more trust in the government than a large portion of this country.
Second, that might work great in countries where the citizenry overwhelmingly agrees with that position, I think it is a recipe for disaster here.
When I think of concealed carry holders, George Zimmerman, that poster boy for excellent judgement, comes to mind, protecting us all from Skittle wielding maniacs. But not just him. I fear that your faith in concealed carry holders is somewfphat misplaced: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/josh-sugarmann/killers-with-concealed-ha_b_3510445.html
As we’d expect, concealed carry holders have been implicated in plenty of murders, including murder-suicides and murders with several victims.
Oops.
The answer is yes he could very easily - and this is coming from someone who has fired both types of guns. 150 rounds in 5 minutes is, as @cosmicfish said, a rather leisurely pace. It is not difficult to empty a 10-round magazine in 10 seconds, and most mags are 15 rounds.
But, such 150 shots in 5 minutes arguments miss the point. Smaller handguns are just as effective as the AR15 at such close range and quarters, so really need to focus not on the gun, but on making sure the gun does not get into the hands of such people, as much as possible.
I think it’s a question worth exploring, though. I read somewhere that the Bushmaster Lanza used had a 30-round magazine, so he would have had to change magazines four times at least. With a 100-round drum, he would have had to pause to change fewer times. And with a 10-round magazine he would have had to pause to change more frequently.
Honestly, I don’t see how magazine size can be negligible in a situation where pausing to reload gives someone a chance to rush the shooter, or to run out of the room if the opportunity is there. Of course, I’m talking more about situations other than Sandy Hook ---- not much chance that the little six-year-olds could have charged Lanza no matter how many seconds he took to reload. But in situations involving adults, having to pause to reload does give intended victims more of a fighting chance. I think that’s how Jared Loughner (the Gabby Giffords shooter) was tackled and stopped.
So restrictions on the size of magazines, or a review process for being allowed to purchase high-capacity drums, is a proposal that has a lot of merit, imo.
You are creating an impossible goal, and this is why policymakers ignore these kinds of general statements.
There are 13 million CCP holders in this country and exactly and how many can you find going off the deep end? You find a few and then generalize. I said virtually zero issue because the percentage of problems is so darn low as to be useless in making any claims in general. Nothing will stop 100% of anything.
However, CCP holders have much better records than the current federal background system that is for sure. And CCP holders save people and stop crimes, so that must be added into the calculus as well, as they provide a definite positive benefit.
And your argument makes no allowance for people being human - someone can be given a CCP and be a great citizen and then something in his / her life happens and the person snaps. No different than this person who snapped, but used his car instead:
You apparently think heroes grow on trees! Despite what Ben Carson says, very, very few people are willing to engage an armed person, whether or not they themselves are armed.
Jared brought one gun, whereas the vast majority of such shooters bring many. The vast majority of people who charge a shooter get shot.
I am not saying that there are not measures to be taken, I am saying that you are discussing on an issue that is almost entirely an issue between armed combatants. And for what it is worth, the big magazines you are discussing are eschewed by serious shooters precisely because they are stupid - they are cumbersome, detract from accuracy, and are a pain in the backside to switch. It is entirely possible that the only reason Loughner fumbled his reload (the whole reason he was able to be tackled) is because he was using that stupid magazine in the first place.
Another idiot with a gun. And a 4 year old dead in road rage incident in New Mexico. Wonder if he was a “normal person who snapped”.
Here’s a link to the above reference (couldnt get ipad to cooperate earlier) http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/21/us/child-road-rage-death/
and this is not an isolated incident
http://nypost.com/2015/02/16/mother-dies-after-shes-shot-in-road-rage-attack/
I think adrenaline or self preservation does create a lot of heroes who will charge a gunman if they see the opportunity.
From wiki:
Loughner proceeded to fire apparently randomly at other members of the crowd. He reportedly used a 9×19mm Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol with a 33-round magazine. A nearby store employee said he heard “15 to 20 gunshots”. Loughner stopped to reload, but dropped the loaded magazine from his pocket to the sidewalk, from where bystander Patricia Maisch grabbed it. Another bystander clubbed the back of the assailant’s head with a folding chair, injuring his elbow in the process, representing the fourteenth injury. Loughner was tackled to the ground by Bill Badger, a 74-year-old retired United States Army Colonel who had been shot himself. Loughner was further subdued by Maisch and bystanders Roger Sulzgeber and Joseph Zamudio. Zamudio was a CCW holder and had a weapon on his person, but arrived after the shooting had stopped and did not draw his firearm.Thirty-one shell casings were found at the scene by investigators.
So if the responsible gun owners, the “serious shooters” or hobbyists, eschew the big magazines, why don’t they speak out in support of a ban to keep the stupid things out of the hands of the James Holmes of the world. With a 100-round magazine on a Smith and Wesson assault rifle, he didn’t need to reload at all to shot 80 or so people in less than 2 minutes.
If, as you say, nobody with any sense needs a 100-round drum, why are they out there for purchase a nutcase whose goal is to kill as many people as possible before being stopped?
It’s obvious to me that the NRA fights every single attempt, however modest, to restrict sales of guns and ammunition not because it is representing the interests of responsible gun owners, but because it represents the sellers and their profits. And that’s what matters, not preventing murders by disturbed people armed to the teeth.
awc, what checks does a CCP background check use that a gun purchase background check does not use? Doesn’t the CCP check use the same federal system you’re damning?
Let’s say I live in Montana. I want a gun, so I go to a gun store, undergo the background check, and buy a gun. I go to a hunter’s safety course and complete their training. Now I want a concealed carry permit. So I fill out this one page application: https://dojmt.gov/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/concealedweaponpermitapplicationsample1.pdf
I give the names of my boyfriend and his two shady friends, and my employer. There are no questions about health, so I don’t have to lie and say that I’m mentally healthy.
I hand the application to the sheriff. The sheriff probably runs a background check using that same federal system you damn because there isn’t another system. The sheriff might call my references; probably not. That’s about it, though. Nothing about doctors or meds.
OK. More than half of Americans don’t have guns, so if they snap, they can’t just grab a gun and shoot it. If, as you claim, someone who has a gun and snaps is just like someone who doesn’t have a gun and snaps, why then don’t we have as many car killings, knife killings and stranglings from people who “just snap” as we do gun killings?
To be sure, there exist car killings. But there exist a lot more gun killings, even though plenty of people who just snap don’t have guns.
It seems to me you are the one making no allowance for people being human. I say, sometimes people just snap, and they shouldn’t have access to a gun when they snap. If they don’t have a gun, statistically they and everyone near them is a lot safer.
Well, let’s look at some actual data and see what it shows, I am genuinely curious.
I went into Wikipedia and took their list of “rampage killers” (defined as killing 6 or more people OR killing at least 4 and wounding at least 10 OR producing at least 12 total casualties), and filtered it for the US from 1980 to the present - I was going to use a shorter time frame but wanted to include some prominent 80’ shootings in this analysis. This produced a list of 77 incidents with varying amounts of information. Of those 77 incidents, 6 were directly ended by civilian action*. This means that for 92% of these shootings, civilians were either unwilling or unable to stop the shooter.
Of the aforementioned 6 cases ended by civilian intervention, 4** of them occurring while the shooter was reloading:
Lawrence W. Moore, killed 4, wounded 19, using a 9mm Browning pistol with 14-round magazines, subdued during his second reload having fired 28 rounds (1981)
Colin Ferguson, killed 6, wounded 19, using a Ruger 9mm pistol with 15-round magazines, subdued during his 3rd reload having fired 30 rounds (1993)
Kipland Kinkel, killed 4, wounded 25, using a Ruger 22LR rifle with a 50-round magazine and a Glock 9mm pistol (mag unspecified), subdued during his first reload having fired 50 rounds of 22LR and 1 round of 9mm (1998)
Jared Loughner, killed 6, wounded 13, using a Glock 9mm pistol with a 33-round magazine, subdued during his first reload having fired 31 rounds (2011)
Some observations:
The number of such shootings (~2.2 per year in the US in the last 35 years) and fatalities (~17.3 per year) makes it hard to draw any real conclusions. It is also not easy to access the data under discussion - types of weapons are readily available, magazine capacities are not. The Oregon shooting that started this thread has still (to the best of my knowledge) not released said information.
While it is certainly true that a great many*** of the other shootings involved high-capacity (>10 round) magazines, I find it interesting that the only successful civilian stoppages of these shooters occurred when they were using high-cap mags. If using standard magazines would make it easier to stop the shooter, why are there no cases of someone using “small” magazines being stopped in at least the last 35 years? Is it because of fewer such shootings, or because they were stopped before reaching the casualty thresholds here, or because reloading small magazines is less problematic? Honestly not sure.
Considering that these shootings make up a tiny fraction of the 8-10 thousand firearm homicides per year in the US, is this where we want to focus attention? Eliminating ALL of the above shootings would reduce the overall firearm homicide rate by 0.2%, and a perfect switch to “small” magazines and “safe” firearms would not even accomplish that.
For two reasons that I know of:
First, the lines drawn by many proposed (or actual) laws cut so low that many practical magazines are banned along with the dumb ones. The cops I shoot with say that they expect only one out of every 5-6 rounds fired by police hits the target, and a typical shooter takes 2-3 rounds to actually drop them (on average)****. This is why many “serious shooters” like 15-18 round magazines - they are small enough to be practical, but large enough to allow a defensive shooter to take out an opponent without likely needing to reload. Reloading can be problematic for a defensive shooter going through the adrenaline rush of an unplanned attack, and many civilian shooters find it impractical to carry easily accessible magazines anyway - the one in the gun is likely all you have!
Second, impractical or not, there is always a “toy” element to guns, and some people like this stuff. And since the ones used in crime generally represent at most a few hundred magazines out of millions on the market, they don’t see why they should have to give them up. Not a great reason, but a reason.
I think you can find a lot of things that kill more than 17 people per year that no one with any sense needs - are we going to ban them all?
Congratulations! You’ve just pinpointed the reason I don’t like the NRA! That does not mean that they don’t occasionally some things with which I agree, however.
**: Caveat here, there were others where civilians intervened and even injured the attacker, but these were the only cases where the civilians actually ended the attack - in all the other cases the attacker remained a combatant after the attempted intervention.
**: Another was stopped by civilian pursuit, and another was stopped by subdual but without reference to reloading.
***: Most of these shootings seem to involve high-capacity magazines, but not all - a quick sample showed several that did not.
****: Please note that many mass-shooting homicides are much more accurate, presumably because of the mental state of the shooters *
Just curious, are you advocating the removal of ALL firearms?
No. I’m not. I think hunters should be able to have hunting weapons, and target shooters should have weapons they can shoot at the range, for example. But I’d require licensing for every gun with required training and recertification, a permit required to have a handgun in the home, strict storage rules for all firearms with strict liability, and a requirement that guns and ammo have tracing equipment included. And I’d crack down on where it was legal to carry a firearm, open or concealed (not at residential colleges, for heaven’s sake! not at bars!) I’d be happy if we had a system like Canada’s.
I’m waiting for awc to explain how that road rage killer in New Mexico could have killed a four year old just as easily with a tire iron. Or maybe a drive-by knifing.