This sort of idiocy is so yanklandian.

We have gun laws in the UK, we dont have kids blowing up schools with fertilizer.

You are misunderstanding me. I am not arguing against the proposals you outline above. I agree that those measures could help on the margins. I am not advocating for inaction.

But you can't be naive enough to believe that those measures would quickly reduce either mass shootings specifically or gun violence generally. The country has dug a very, very deep hole on this issue -- too deep to climb out of in a year or two. That's why I said a multi-decade, bi-partisan commitment probably would be required to bring U.S. gun violence into line with the rest of the Western world.

To put it gently, this country doesn't have a history of excellence when it comes to planning for the next generation.

Expanded background checks might be politically feasible, and they certainly can't hurt, but I wonder how effective they would be. It is a little reminiscent of the the argument that most problems with the tax code can be solved by rooting out fraud. The reason it sounds relatively painless to a lot of moderates, and therefore relatively palatable to a lot of moderates, is also the reason why it probably won't be particularly effective.

Australia had a gun culture and they still implemented gun control.There’s just nothing stopping America from implementing huge changes except a sense of learned helplessness. We’re not biologically different from every other developed nation.

How many times do I have to say that I am not opposing gun control.

There was a huge initiative in Australia to get guns off the street after a mass shooting in 1996. By 2018, guns per capita had been reduced in Australia by 23%.

If the United States reduced per capital civilian gun ownership by the same amount overnight (rather than over 22 years), there would be still be twice as many guns on the street in the U.S. as there are in any country in the Western world and six times as many guns on the street as there are in Australia.

The hole is very deep. I agree that you have to start somewhere if you ever intend to fill the hole.

I get that, but also you seem to think gun control won’t really solve the problem and yet it seems to work brilliantly everywhere else.

When it comes to gun violence there is zero reason for optimism in the US that anything will change. Nothing changed after a bunch of 1st graders got gunned down in Newtown, nothing will change now. In fact after Newtown gun and ammo sales went through the roof as the gun nuts were afraid of pending laws that might make obtaining them it more difficult. I suspect the same will happen now/

It would take a nationwide bi-partisan effort to not only make new guns harder to get, but to remove the insane number of existing guns. It is simply not happening. Certainly not in any of our lifetimes. So it's probably wasted energy even thinking about it.

It feels like the US is just diseased, rotten, with no cure. Do other first-world countries even have such a thing as "active shooter drills" in schools? I don't think so. If that is not a sign of a terminally diseased society I don't know what is.

Yeah when our kids get pissed off they run away and get ****ed up. Yours run to the gunstore and start gunning down children. What's up with this?

I think you are correct but just throwing out the media does self censor when it comes to suicides, largely, knowing the copy cat effect that can happen if they give them too much press attention.

I do think the element of 'projected crime' vs 'self harm' would be the difference here though.

Separately does anyone but me think politicians on both sides of the aisle need to STFU on this stuff.

I find it sickening to see both sides stand up and give their own versions of grief, sadness and need for changes, when both sides know the will to do what it takes to make any really changes by either party, is not there.

I find it gross to hear them sob, complain or express their "outrage" from the POTUS on down. Just STFU about it.

I don't think it will solve the problem quickly. Do you?

I also think that addressing climate change will require decades of sustained effort in order to be effective. Is that also a controversial view in your opinion?

Bolded is a fair observation, but I think there is a difference in the perceived newsworthiness of a one-off suicide and a mass shooting. Mass shootings can wreck entire communities for 10-20 years. Think about what just happened. All those kids were in the same class. The kids were young. I'm sure that a lot of the parents knew each other reasonably well. And now they are all dealing with the murder of a 9-10 year old child. How can that not wreck a community?

Depends what you mean by quickly

Much is done by young people and the next lot growing up can have their access to guns made massively harder fairly quickly.

Yes.

And lets not refuse to say why.

CORPORATE PROFITS and SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS.

That is it. No more and no less. As in all things we see inaction on both sides on any issue that would harm corporate profits, and special interest groups, as politicians gobble up lobby money to vote against common sense measures and to fight any filibuster reform and to fight to keep the august Tradition of the Senate parliamentarian even as legislation on gun reform, Voter rights, Abortion rights, and so much of Bidens agenda has the types of support from the populace that very few pieces of legislation get.


We have enormous amounts of the most popular legislation ever, all blocked by filibuster and Senate Parliamentarian that Mitch McConnel would not spend two minutes before he blew through them if he had a key piece of legislation he felt was a core tenet of his agenda and to deliver to his base.

The Dem's don't want to remove the blockades as it would then require them to deliver or just state they have no interest to, despite it being on the table for them to do. They require something (filibuster, Parliamentarian), or someone (Manchin, Sinema, Obama's desire for bipartisanship, etc) to blame when they fail, as if not by design.

and yet with lots of hunting rifles and hand guns in Canada, we do not see the improvised other weapons to up the kill count.

Sounds like you came into this in bad faith and to spread the usual dishonest US excuse making for the gun lobby of 'it's not the weapons, and maybe the answer is to arm the victims or their protectors better'.

Garbage.

Well we have an elderly President who may be a 1-termer anyway. I'd like to see Biden go all-in on gun control as he has little to lose politically at this stage of his life, and still has a Congressional majority for another 6 months.

Problem is even some Dems won't get on board as they are afraid of the gun nuts so nothing will happen.

If you can't remove guns or most types of gun then I think these two measures could be very impactful :

- expanded back ground checks, including SM, while expanding exclusions for mentally ill and those reported to have done or threatened violence
- cool off times for the above as well, so even if you somehow qualify you are forced to wait weeks/months


I think both would get massively wide support from the general public and would reduce greatly many of the impulse type crimes that we see today

You would have no problem getting my support for those proposed measures.

Are mass shooting mostly impulse crimes? I don't know. I would guess that some are and some aren't. Many mass shooters seem to fantasize about killing a bunch of people for a while before they actually do it.

A lot of one-off shootings are impulse crimes, of course.

It certainly would be gratifying to see a president unambiguously tell the NRA to go **** itself.

Don’t have to worry about a massacre this weekend at the NRA conference because all guns are banned from the event. Lolololol that they can do that and then argue against gun free zones.

Canada/UK/Aus also doesn't seem to have a problem with young men becoming so infused with hatred toward society that they fantasize and desire to murdering as many innocents as possible. That seems to be a unique American problem and is the root of mass shootings. Why is this a 30 year old problem and not a 300 year old problem, if guns are THE problem. Guns have been around a lot longer than these mass shooting incidents.

Did I say anything about arming teachers or students? And yes I want people who want to ban "assault rifles" to be able to define what one is, because I dont trust them not to define a BB gun as an assault rifle.

My issue generally with progressive problem solving, is that they see a field of weeds, and think that taking a weed eater to the field solves the weeds problem. (banning guns will stop mass shootings) But in reality you have superficially made the problem appear solved without addressing the roots, and the weeds just come back. (another sociopath uses whatever tools are available to live out his murderous fantasies)

Wow, doesn't take you long to start this "bad faith" nonsense, does it?

Addendum: Is one of your goals in life to derail every important conversation with personal attacks?

Several things in response to this. First, gun control naturally tends to be a topic of conversation in the wake of mass shootings. But preventing mass shootings isn't the only reason to support more gun control. Mass shootings will never be more than a tiny percentage of overall gun deaths.

Second, even if we limit the discussion to mass shootings, we don't have choose between addressing gun availability and addressing mental health issues or other factors that may contribute to the prevalence of mass shootings in the United States.

Third, I think you know what most people mean that use the term "assault rifle" in the context of a message board discussion. They are talking about rifles that are capable of firing a relatively large number of rounds in relatively short succession. In other words, they are talking about the sort of gun that would be most effective if your goal was to kill a lot of people in a short period of time. Defining weapons for the purpose of legislation of course would require more precision.

Fourth, you are talking as if you believe that there is no connection between gun availability and gun violence. Is that really what you believe? You obviously can find locations or time periods in which gun violence increased with no corresponding increase in gun availability. But that hardly proves the absence of a connection at a broader level.

1. this would be awesome but entirely too hard to legislate. My neighbor gets to snitch on me because I refuse to get rid of the dandelions on my lawn?
2. I see no issue with tying some sort of #1 to #2. If it takes 60 days to do a complete BG check, then that may be the best cooling off period. Cooling off time would help ME to control my urge to BUY_RIGHT_NOW... lol.

How about adding:
-ownership of weapons determined to be at age of maturity. Sounds very unlikely but if "boys or girls" don't develop until a certain age (let's say 25 years old as a starting point), then ownership of a weapon is illegal until then.
-to continue, make the parents (or above the 25 yo "responsible adult" age) responsible for securing all weapons. Grandpa may have given you a rifle at age 8 in his will,,,, but the parents must maintain security until age 25. Dad can take son to a shoot at any age but must be present when the gun(s) are out of the mandatory safe. Kid gets a gun in his/her hands without supervision, parent goes to jail.
-OMG, please get rid of all transfer loopholes. Gun shows need to make transfers under FFL guidance (some states already do this). Guns from dad to daughter should need an FFL transfer as well.
-As many have said relating to this argument, simply fund the enforcement of the current laws and gun control gets...under control.

As an owner of a NRA life membership, it kinda disgusts me about the talking point "We can't give up one single inch to the anti-gun lobby"

I do believe that in the current USA, mental health issues are the current cause of the school-shooting problem. Not too many guns.

No, the problem is the Second Amendment, as everybody knows.

Well, quelle surprise. No, the problem is the Second Amendment.