Multiple Shootings at Oregon's Umpqua Community College

What do you mean by “hunting weapons” and “weapons they can shoot at the range”?

The modern deer rifle, even at it’s most basic, surpasses the best infantry weapons of my grandparents generation, and with the barest of tweaking becomes a standard sniper rifle. Given the variety of prey and the variety of “seasons” there are a lot of “hunting weapons” that are going to be just about as effective in a mass shooting as anything military-looking.

Target weapons are likewise quite diverse. If you are thinking “Olympic shooting” then you are thinking of a small fraction of recreational and competitive shooting. Race guns, in skilled hands, would be terribly practical weapons. And there is the entire sport of “practical shooting” that focuses on using the very kinds of weapons used in these kinds of shootings.

Depending on the details, I could get behind most of this, with perhaps the exception of tracing ammo - simply put, I do not see it as either practical to implement nor worthwhile. I would also argue that the sum total of this cannot be burdensome without passing a constitutional amendment, which is not going to happen any time soon.

I know a lot of Canadians who aren’t.

I’ve heard that tracing ammo is technically feasible. If it isn’t, then obviously I’m not in favor of it.

I would like to reduce accidental deaths, suicides, murders and injuries. If a gun is involved in a death or injury, as far as I can determine, it’s usually a handgun. For that reason, I’d concentrate more on keeping handguns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, which would include unsupervised children, people who are untrained in the safe use/storage/handling of handguns, people who have been drinking, people who are suicidal, criminals, and anyone who leaves a gun unsecured or sells it so that a member of the one of the previous groups can get their hands on it.

PS: for the gun owners in this thread, if you have a family member with depression, please please please make sure there is no way the depressed person can get your gun. Same if you have a depressed friend who sometimes visits.

Yes, I do want to focus attention on mass shooters and regulations that would reduce casualties. These killers go out planning to kill as many people as they can before being taken down or committing suicide and I think as a society we should try to keep high-capacity magazines out of their hands. That some hobbyists want access to the same high-capacity magazines for fun is not a compelling argument to have them so widely available for anyone to purchase.

Or, as noted before, make the high capacity magazines something you have to go through a review and permit process to obtain. Geez, at least make it harder to amass the kinds of arsenals that end up in the hands of mentally/psychologically disturbed people…or I might add, that could end up in the hands of terrorists bent on killing large numbers of people.

So it’s a “tiny” fraction of firearm homicides — if it’s a fraction that can be reduced, let’s go for it. Can we keep in mind that .02 percent represents real people who have (or had) real rights of their own…like the right to live?

I notice there’s a tendency to zero in on the fatalities number, maybe a desire to minimize the problem. But let’s not forget the wounded, some of whom may be physically or psychologically affected for the rest of their lives. Look at the cases in the list you posted: 20 killed, but 76 wounded. James Holmes in Aurora, with his 100-round magazine, wounded 70 people in 90 seconds (killed 12.)

And while we have been talking about mass shooters, restricting or permitting high-capacity magazines could also reduce casualties in other crimes involving shoot outs (between gang members or between criminals and police officers.)

The goal should be to try to reduce the number of casualties, fatal and nonfatal, involved in the collateral damage that comes with tolerating our gun culture. So hobbyists have to reload more often with smaller magazines…or go through background checks or permitting to get the magazines they want. I would think the right to life for others would be worth the inconvenience.

“Sweden school attack: horror as sword attacker kills teacher and pupil”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/22/pupils-wounded-in-sword-attack-at-swedish-school

Imagine how many more he could have killed with an arsenal of assault weapons.

Imagining that quantity is the goal tends to be very American.

Wasn’t there another shooting on a campus in/near Nashville recently?? Ugh!!

Yes, Tennessee State, early this morning: http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/23/us/tennessee-state-university-campus-shooting/

But it was just your garden-variety, mundane (sigh) shooting, not an attempt at mass slaughter, and the shooter was not a student.

I found out this week that a guy I know was injured at one of last week’s Cubs/Cardinals game. He has been working security part-time at Wrigley Field during games for probably as many years as I’ve known him (almost 20). Evidently, one ticket holder started attacking another ticket holder, and this guy I know tried to intervene. But the attacker promptly picked him up (he’s not a small guy) and threw him down some concrete steps, where he landed on his head. He was hospitalized, but out now, although he is still suffering headaches.

All I kept thinking was, with all the drunk fools at baseball games (and I think especially at Wrigley compared to other fields I’ve been to), especially ones who have been waiting many years for their team to get this far and are not only drunk, but enormously emotionally charged, it was a good thing gate security screens people for weapons before entering the ballpark, or there could be a couple of dead people right now.

Alcohol and guns do not mix… at all, ever. Which is why I’m so adamant that guns not be allowed on college campuses.

My college fortunately put down a bill allowing guns on our campus recently. It was brought up when Texas passed theirs.

I have read hundreds of posts in an attempt to catch up with all the commentary here. I am not going to read hundreds more.
The vast majority of the gun violence that occurs in our country is inner city gun violence. It is a ridiculously high percentage and it happens in the commission of crimes. The feel good things being proposed are not going to address the lions share of gun violence or would have an incredibly long period of time that would need to go by to see statistical improvement.
I have no issue with stricter background checks, the elimination of person to person gun sales of guns, and am open to other practical criteria that may improve upon our present circumstances.
Unless we address the inner city gun violence issues all other effort and measures are like a drop of water in the ocean. Getting law abiding suburban people to give up scary looking military style guns and to give up magazines beyond a certain capacity is all feel good BS. People who would willingly relinquish these things are not people who are at all likely to use them in a destructive manner.
I am completely sensitive to the devastation experienced by any loved one who loses someone at the hand of any type of gun violence. I just don’t believe the things that are being proposed are meaningful as it relates to meaningfully changing the circumstances.
I am all for going flat out and ridding our inner cities of illegal guns, stop and frisk, door to door searches, I don’t care and let all of our civil liberties be damned. You can’t have it all, the type of safety that we would all like to have. We can’t just go after the low hanging fruit and think that is going to be meaningful. Cities routinely inspect tenant occupied dwellings for safety considerations, why couldn’t they search for illegal guns as well?
So my sense of this issue is that if you really want meaningful things to happen people have to be willing to give as it relates to their civil liberties. Other wise nothing truly meaningful will happen.
We should also take the crime out of crime, make vice crimes legal, Drugs, Gambling, Prostitution. Make them legal, clean them up, tax them, take the criminal component out of them. They are not going away and if they were legal people would be far less likely to be killing one another over crime related issues.
Unless we are receptive to this type of effort and change it is going to be same old, same old. I am a life time fisherman and hunter and a proud non member of the NRA.

^^ Excellent summary of all the issues discussed in this thread.

However, I would like to offer that the post is structurally based on the person-on-other person criminal element of crime and does not include the issue of self-inflicted wounds via suicide.

In sheer numbers, 60% of the deaths by guns are suicide, and a big non-starter for the majority of people is when the argument is made that guns should be highly restricted for normal people because others might kill themselves with a gun. That is a bridge too far for far too many, as a useful argument, because it ignores the many multiples more who have saved themselves from being killed by using a gun in self-defense. The life of the person who sadly kills himself with a gun is not less valuable than the person who saves his life or his family’s utilizing a gun. (A background check that effectively targets mental illness and suicide tendencies is something that is overdue.)

I like your civil liberty issues breakdown as well, as that is the proverbial 800-pound elephant in the room. Again for the overwhelming majority, they firmly believe the respect for their civil liberties by government bureaucrats is kept in check because the bureaucrats know that they would have to face the business end of a gun if they went too far in intruding in people’s lives by stepping on civil liberties.

I do come out a opposite in the civil liberties argument; I do think civil liberties, because they involve so much more than gun ownership, should be preserved. The camel’s nose needs to be kept out of the tent.

This is a common misconception. In fact, the majority of gun violence in this country is suicide, which is not concentrated in the inner city. A full 61% of gun deaths are suicides.

Unfortunately, law abiding gun owners and their relatives are not immune to shooting themselves. And some law abiding gun owners shoot their neighbors by accident or their wives or girlfriends on purpose. Even if stricter gun laws did nothing about the rate of inner city homicides (which by the way has plummeted in the last twenty years) they could save a lot of lives.

To be accurate, your college put down a bill to allow law-abiding people to carry guns on campus.

However, while putting down the bill, what procedures did your college recommend for the non- law abiding person who decides to bring a gun and start shooting students? Exactly what is your college recommend you do when that person enters your building, cafeteria, or classroom and starts shooting people?

The college, I would hope, gave you and other students specific instructions on what to do to help save yourselves. Did it?

I was not considering suicide. I was only considering gun violence perpetuated by one person against others.
There are a lot of ways to take your own life if someone is so inclined.
I was of the impression the primary focus of this conversation was the creation of ways to prevent intentional and accidental shooting of other people.
I contend in order to do that there would have to be a significant encroachment on people’s civil liberties in the manner I described earlier. There has to be that kind of willingness otherwise nothing meaningful will happen.

Thanks for the clarification.

I just realized you stated earlier that there were a few segments you did not read. There was some rather lengthy discussions about suicides and how limiting those is also a major reason why guns should be very limited, even for the normal law-abiding.

I realize that you weren’t considering suicide, but people who kill themselves with guns are still dead. Now, you might say that people who deliberately kill themselves with guns would have used another method of suicide if the gun was not available. And that would be a good argument, if it were true. But it isn’t. The evidence is overwhelming that access to a gun makes someone more likely to try to take their own life, and more likely to succeed if they do try. The total rate of suicide (all causes) in gun households is much greater than in non-gun households.

Do not believe that if someone doesn’t have a gun, they’ll just kill themselves some other way. This is not true. We have a lot of information about suicide, and the way potential suicides think, and, as it turns out, if suicide becomes more difficult (because no gun is at hand) fewer people will kill themselves. You might say, well, they could just use some other method. Yes, they could, but they don’t.

The initial focus of this thread was preventing mass suicides. But the thread expanded to considerations of all gun violence. If somehow we could wave a magic wand, and prevent all gun violence except gun violence in inner cities, we would eliminate the large majority of all gun deaths.

^I meant to say “the initial focus of this thread was preventing mass shootings.” Sorry for the error.

I wasn’t considering suicide. That is an entirely different conversation and one that would even more so require the relinquishing of many personal freedoms in order to implement solutions that would actually work.

awc, I’ll take it as a given (for the purposes of this conversation) that you want to have the ability to kill yourself with your own gun if you choose to. What safeguards do you think are justified to make sure that no one else other than the gun owner kills themselves with the gun owner’s gun? Do you think gun stores should do anything to prevent the sales of guns to people who intend to use them for suicide?

Your premise and question set up a false path of responsibility and utterly fails to address the actual person doing harm. I find that effort to shift responsibility quite odd.

It always surprises me how people do not see the weakness of this argument and why it fails to move people. The overwhelming majority of people are not blinded enough to blame the gun for suicides, as they know the trigger must be pulled by a human.

Thus, the overwhelming majority are naturally not going to blame the gun store for a person using a gun to harm himself. They naturally feel sorry that someone felt that need and feel sorry the person did not get help prior. For the overwhelming majority, it is rightfully not the method, but the mindset that they realize is the cause of suicide.

A few analogous thoughts about this shifting of responsibility to the gun store that illustrate why this approach falls on deaf ears:

The gun store has the same responsibility as a car dealer to verify the person buying a car is not an alcoholic and a drunk driver about to kill people since drunk drivers kill 10,000+ people per year. Why not the call for car dealers to ensure they sell only to sober people and hold them responsible if they sell to an alcoholic?

The gun store has the same responsibility as a pharmacy to ensure the pills bought are not being stockpiled and going to be used in the future for an intentional overdose. Why not the call for pharmacies to be liable (even if proper prescriptions are used) for selling too many drugs to the same person or families and holding them responsible for selling to an openly suicidal person, proper doctors’ prescriptions be damned?

The gun store has the same responsibility as bridge designers and builders to ensure that people cannot jump off their bridges. Why not the call for bridge designers and builders to be liable for making sure their bridges cannot be used as a jumping off point for surely they could design jump-proof bridges?

The gun store has the same responsibility as car designers and builders have for people who die in accidents caused by speeding. All my cars can go anywhere from 2.4 to 4X the 55 limit, and 2 to 3X the 75 highway limit. Why not the call to hold car makers for designing and building cars that can go faster than any posted speed limit for obviously it is misuse of the product to go faster than legal? Specifically, why not the call to hold them liable for making the car able to go faster than the rated limit of the car’s safety features?

The gun store has the same responsibility as any beer or alcohol maker has for college students (and others) who get drunk and then claim sexual assault when intoxicated. Why not the call to hold beer and alcohol makers liable for selling a product that when used properly, i.e., ingested, causes a person to be openly less able to fend off sexual assault?

Overall, gun control advocates need to make their arguments more cohesive, as they are all over the place in terms of responsibility shifting.

There is the call for more in-depth background checks and the like (which I think everyone agrees on in principle), and then gun control advocates say that the federal government should run it, just like the feds do now. I think I can make this generalization about all posters on this thread - better background checks.

However, then in the same breath, some, not all, want to blame the gun store for not checking more thoroughly. Huh? Gun stores are not in control of the background checking process, never have been, so why the heck blame them? Do you think gun store owners are mind readers and who can sniff out suicidal people even if a government background check says they are OK to purchase? Best blame your federal government which runs the background system and your congressmen who ignore your calls for more intrusive mental health checks - but then also expect the ACLU with civil liberties and HIPAA issues.

Gun stores are legal businesses selling a legal product that is heavily regulated by the federal government, just like car, drug, and alcohol producers. Yet some advocates what to blame the gun owners specifically for following the laws of selling a legal product. It is not as if gun stores are lying to consumers and saying guns, if fired at people, do not kill.

Everyone knows a bullet can stop / kill a human or other animal - that is the whole darn point of the thing!!! When hunting, a gun is effective and efficient in helping gather food. And when being attacked, it is an effective and efficient self-defense tool precisely because it can stop a human attacker - no good if it could not effectively stop an attacker. Therefore, since this use and ability to harm to the point of stopping something or someone are understood, it is up to the human purchasing the gun to be responsible with his legal product, not the gun store.

This thread really illustrates why the call of more gun control has gone literally nowhere - the main arguments fall apart on logic alone and thus most people, who not being reflexive based on just not liking guns, are not convinced at all.