Another mass shooting - largest in a good while, by a few victims

[coloradoatheist]

The gist of your response seems to be that we should be making the world safer, and I agree. We have taken steps to improve all aspects of car safety. We have taken steps to limit the use of tobacco. We seem to be addressing the use of drugs in a rational manner, some may disagree, and I think we're unanimous that islamic terrorism is bad.

So what in the name of Paul Bunyan's balls has that got to do with assault rifles and bump stocks? If you are for banning them as well, is there some greater point I am missing?

My point is, cars without computer assist safety features should be banned before assault rifles. Simple math says so.

If we are going on the list of things that kill us. Cigarettes, fast food, alcohol, cars....and eventually we get down to guns.

 

[sharon45]

We have taken steps to improve all aspects of car safety.

Uh, would that include raising the speed limit from 55 to 70 mph?

 

[barbos]

Interesting numbers here
According to them, there were estimated 122 deaths due to auto accidents on the day of Las Vegas massacre.
That's twice as many.

Were these intentional deaths?

I am not sure what's worse - to die because of some madman with an assault rifle or some idiot selfieing himself/herself while driving.

 

[Elixir]

My point is, cars without computer assist safety features should be banned before assault rifles. Simple math says so.

If we are going on the list of things that kill us. Cigarettes, fast food, alcohol, cars....and eventually we get down to guns.

....and waaaay down the list; terrorism. I think that worldwide it falls somewhere south of falling coconuts.

 

[coloradoatheist]

If we are going on the list of things that kill us. Cigarettes, fast food, alcohol, cars....and eventually we get down to guns.

....and waaaay down the list; terrorism. I think that worldwide it falls somewhere south of falling coconuts.

Yep. I think getting injured by your toilet might be higher. It's higher than dying from a meteor though.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

My point is, cars without computer assist safety features should be banned before assault rifles. Simple math says so.

If we are going on the list of things that kill us. Cigarettes, fast food, alcohol, cars....and eventually we get down to guns.

It is pretty hard to commit a homicide with cigarettes. Fast food, if you make someone choke, I suppose.

Nothing like the dumbest fucking arguments against gun controls.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The guy had a camera in the hall, for the cop to have entered would be suicide--and perhaps counterproductive besides.

Why not break the camera or otherwise disable its function?

Because they didn't know it was there.

 

[Angry Floof]

....and waaaay down the list; terrorism. I think that worldwide it falls somewhere south of falling coconuts.

Yep. I think getting injured by your toilet might be higher. It's higher than dying from a meteor though.

The death rate due to falling out of bed is much higher than from shark attacks. But Australian right wing authoritarian followers still want Americans' machine guns so they can kill all the sharks. Because lack of perspective and abuse of statistics are standard for lazy brains.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

A 27' U-haul would be just about as effective and has no special licensing requirements. The extra licensing for the heavies is because they're so long, normal driver training isn't enough.

I'd love to see you try to rent a u-haul without a license. But you digress. Why would anyone go through the trouble of renting a u-haul and driving it into a crowd - possibly endangering themselves in the process - when acquiring fully automatic weapons is so much easier?

aa

You need a driver's license to rent a U-haul. I said no special licensing requirements. (And that's why I picked a 27'--that's the limit on what you can get on a normal license. While bigger ones exist you need to show a trucker's license to rent them.)

You need a driver's license or non-driver's ID to buy a gun.

Basically equal.

And at the time I wrote that I figured this was a suicide mission like most such attacks--endangering is irrelevant. Since I wrote that the cops have found he appears to have had additional plans, whether they were simply more attacks or actual escape I don't think they have found out. I suspect it was another attack, though--the cops have said he had 50 pounds of explosives in his car as well as more guns. They have also said they found Tannerite at his home. Tannerite goes boom, it's legal to buy, all his other stuff was legal so I strongly suspect the "explosives" were Tannerite. Staying within the realm of legal the only way to set off Tannerite is with a rifle. Thus my guess is that once he ran out of targets he was going to drive somewhere and shoot, and then go boom when the law closed in.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's apparent you aren't paying attention to the actual evidence.

1) The people being shot at didn't realize it until they started noticing the hits. The shots were drowned out by the music.

Apparently YOU are not paying attention. Witnesses DID hear the gunshots. They just didn't know what it was at first. Quite a few thought is was fireworks.

2) Check what the police are saying. A whole bunch of rifles with bumpfire stocks. No mentions of any full auto weapons.

You ignored my point.

You're not refuting my point. People didn't realize they were under fire when the rifles didn't have suppressors. Thus what difference would a suppressor make??

Now, I expect to see bumpfire stocks and the like banned (but existing ones legal) as a result of this. They used to be evaluated as not a substantial threat (they make your shooting inaccurate, you fire a lot of rounds that normally are a miss. A toy for the range, not something useful to a criminal), that just changed.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Really that means you should work on passing a constitutional amendment, unlike those on the gun-crazy side who try to find a way to interpret the 2nd Amendment to say people can't have guns.

2nd amendment says citizens can bear nuclear arms.

Yes and no. The 2nd basically gives the people the same weapons as the state. In one sense that means people could have nukes, but the flip side of this is that the state imposes severe restrictions on it's own actors possessing nukes. It's impossible for an individual to comply with those limitations.

(Note, though, that this only applies to possession, not ownership. While one might say that's a distinction without a difference I disagree. If Acme Asteroid Movers wants to shove a rock around with an Orion drive I would say it should be legal for them to buy the bombs and have them delivered to the jobsite by the state.)

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Apparently YOU are not paying attention. Witnesses DID hear the gunshots. They just didn't know what it was at first. Quite a few thought is was fireworks.

2) Check what the police are saying. A whole bunch of rifles with bumpfire stocks. No mentions of any full auto weapons.

You ignored my point.

You're not refuting my point. People didn't realize they were under fire when the rifles didn't have suppressors.

They most certainly realized it was gun fire rather quickly. It was discerning the origin of the gun fire that was the issue. A suppressor would make that harder.

Now, I expect to see bumpfire stocks and the like banned (but existing ones legal) as a result of this. They used to be evaluated as not a substantial threat (they make your shooting inaccurate, you fire a lot of rounds that normally are a miss. A toy for the range, not something useful to a criminal), that just changed.

Used to be evaluated by some people as "not a substantial threat", but not by others. Apparently 58 dead people helped you to understand how fucking wrong you were.

- - - Updated - - -

2nd amendment says citizens can bear nuclear arms.

Yes and no. The 2nd basically gives the people the same weapons as the state. In one sense that means people could have nukes, but the flip side of this is that the state imposes severe restrictions on it's own actors possessing nukes. It's impossible for an individual to comply with those limitations.

(Note, though, that this only applies to possession, not ownership. While one might say that's a distinction without a difference I disagree. If Acme Asteroid Movers wants to shove a rock around with an Orion drive I would say it should be legal for them to buy the bombs and have them delivered to the jobsite by the state.)

Loren Pechtel, home of the most outrageously exotic and nonsensical hypotheticals this side of the Kuiper Belt.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Brains make decisions. You are derailing the thread, take your autonomy of consciousness assertion to the appropriate thread.

We have a difference of opinion.

Here is where we find evidence we act on our opinions.

Not on some internal programming of the brain.

We are conscious beings that can act on our opinions and nothing else.

So you don't believe in reason. No wonder your posts feel like preaching rather than reason!

- - - Updated - - -

Despite all the hype it didn't work in Australia.

1) The murder rate was already going down, the gun-banners are taking credit for this. All you actually see is noise around the trend line, just what you would expect to see if nothing were changed. Gun bans simply disarm the law-abiding.

2) They've had mass shootings since.

3) Given their population many years between crazies would be expected anyway. We simply don't have enough data.

Wait, there has been other mass shootings in Australia? How have I missed this?

Islamist.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What I need to do is find out the background of why the U.S outlawed the sale and possession of machine guns for Joe Snuffy back in the 1930's. Maybe it was because of organized crime activity. But the second amendment only says arms, not prohibiting machine guns or light anti-tank weapons. So 2nd amendment worshippers should have anything they can afford to purchase, constitutionally speaking.

My impression is that the gangsters were shooting it out with machine guns. I don't mind the heavier stuff being restricted (although I don't think silencers should be on that list), but I don't like how the laws are implemented:

1) We are doing it bass-ackwards. There should be no background check for buying an NFA item. Rather, the background check should apply once--to get a license for such items. Also, the $200 tax stamp is nuts.

2) Explosive ammunition should also require an explosives license and the ammunition would be subject to the storage and transport requirements of explosives--note that this makes explosive ammo something that only rural people could own. (If you expend such a round you would be required to prove doing so--generally, a video made with a GPS-enabled camera of it going boom would be good.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Except that the murder rate continued to go down even when violent crime overall spiked dramatically in the years following the ban. More importantly, the rate of homicides involving firearms dropped far faster than the homicide rate itself. All of which is what one would expect from a reduction in the availability of firearms to the general population.

So, you displaced firearm murders with other murders. Dead is dead.

The ban was intended to REDUCE mass shootings, not eliminate them completely. It clearly accomplished that.

But that's all--and as you said, violent crime spiked. That's the safety tradeoff.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

What I need to do is find out the background of why the U.S outlawed the sale and possession of machine guns for Joe Snuffy back in the 1930's. Maybe it was because of organized crime activity. But the second amendment only says arms, not prohibiting machine guns or light anti-tank weapons. So 2nd amendment worshippers should have anything they can afford to purchase, constitutionally speaking.

My impression is that the gangsters were shooting it out with machine guns.

Yeah, no one is familiar with the Thomas Machine Gun and its connection to the prohibition mobs.

I don't mind the heavier stuff being restricted (although I don't think silencers should be on that list), but I don't like how the laws are implemented:

1) We are doing it bass-ackwards. There should be no background check for buying an NFA item. Rather, the background check should apply once--to get a license for such items. Also, the $200 tax stamp is nuts.

The $200 tax was what it was originally, back in the late 20s, which was prohibitive at the time. The tax hasn't been increased since then.

2) Explosive ammunition should also require an explosives license and the ammunition would be subject to the storage and transport requirements of explosives--note that this makes explosive ammo something that only rural people could own. (If you expend such a round you would be required to prove doing so--generally, a video made with a GPS-enabled camera of it going boom would be good.)

That is a good idea, because until they somehow manage to invent a personal transport vehicle, there is no way country mouse will be able to get their explosives to the city.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Assault rifles, which ARE weapons, are dangerous enough that almost ANY use in a public place has a high probability of causing a fatal or near-fatal injury to other. It's relevant in this case that the 122 traffic deaths in Las Vegas that day were all ACCIDENTS that the drivers in those cases tried and failed to prevent; the Route 96 Massacre was a DELIBERATE attempt to kill large numbers of people that had to be terminated by law enforcement.

People use them at the local gun ranges all the time. I haven't heard of a single shooting.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

That is a good idea, because until they somehow manage to invent a personal transport vehicle, there is no way country mouse will be able to get their explosives to the city.

We have a total of one crime committed by someone with an NFA weapon and it was to property. The bad apples aren't getting through the cracks.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

That is a good idea, because until they somehow manage to invent a personal transport vehicle, there is no way country mouse will be able to get their explosives to the city.

We have a total of one crime committed by someone with an NFA weapon and it was to property. The bad apples aren't getting through the cracks.

Yeah, one crime. One solitary crime. I mean yeah, it was a massacre, but just "one crime". That is just a statement dripping with empathy.

One crime, 58 families devastated, hundreds of individuals that'll suffer from PTSD. I'm glad you think the number is acceptable fodder. At least someone is happy.

Curious, how many attacks before it is necessary to intercede?

 

[sharon45]

Curious, how many attacks before it is necessary to intercede?

That is for the voting public to decide.