Would like to get thoughts on how to combat mass shootings. Trying to keep this focused on events like El Paso, Dayton, Aurora, Emmanuel, Sandy Hook, Pulse, etc. please don't turn this into a "bit Chicago had xxxx shootings last weekend thread.

First of all, it needs to be understood that mass shootings (and homicides using firearms in general) are relatively rare. It only seems like gun violence or mass shootings are a "crisis" because the Leftist Establishment press and media incessantly hypes and sensationalizes such events when they do occur -- and largely because they want to push a gun control and gun ban agenda.

According to the CDC, there are 40k firearm deaths in the United States every year. But of those 40k firearm deaths, 24k of those are from suicide. That only leaves around 16k deaths where one person is killing another person. The CDC also reports 75k poisoning deaths per year, 39k motor vehicle deaths, and 36k unintentional fall deaths.

But where is the hysteria from Leftists to stop poisoning deaths or deaths from car accidents? Is there a nationwide political campaign highlighting automobile deaths, or pushing for more "car control" that is anywhere near the agenda on the Left to ban firearms?

Now, as for stopping criminals with guns. There will always be criminals in any society. It's human nature. And people will murder others whether they have guns, or whether they do it with knives or blunt objects. And we have the right to own and carry firearms. In a society where everyone has the right to own firearms, the best way to deter criminals is for as many decent, law-abiding people to be armed as possible. How is any criminal with a gun stopped? Usually when the police or a law-abiding citizen shows up with guns of their own to stop the criminal. Good guys with guns stop the bad guys with guns.

It has been shown via studies that "gun control" actually increases crime in an area. Why? Because gun control only disarms the law-abiding citizens. The big cities that are Democrat-controlled and have draconian gun control, such as Chicago and DC, have the highest crime rates. So, if a city like DC or Chicago bans hand guns, that only means that law-abiding citizens will not have hand guns. Meanwhile, the criminals in DC and Chicago are always going to be armed, and able to obtain handguns. This puts the law-abiding citizens at a disadvantage, and makes them easy targets and "prey" for the criminal element. A criminal in an area with strict gun control can suspect, for instance, that if he tries to rob a house or rob a person at gunpoint, that the potential victim is extremely unlikely to be armed in order to defend themselves.

Many of the calls on both sides of the aisle have called this domestic terrorism in last few weeks, so some progress there

I believe that we are going to have these from here on out. Sadly in some cases there's not much you can do to stop it but in some cases there are signs before it happens. I do believe if the killer is caught alive he should be executed within 48 hours.

So...the Dayton shooter is a supporter of Elizabeth Warren for President and a self-described socialist and Satanist.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/heavy.com/news/2019/08/connor-betts-twitter-politics-social-media/amp/

But I'm "crazy" for talking about the link between the Left and Marxism and Satanism.

And per the leftist Establishment media, we're supposed to believe that the only "solution" to crime is to destroy the Second Amendment, and start confiscating and banning guns. No. That's the communist agenda - disarm the masses, and totally subject the people under an all-powerful State/government.

The problem is not guns, which are a tool. It's wicked people.

curmudgeon.zen said:

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Discussion needs to be about mental health, not gun control. Crazy homicidal folk are not going to stop being crazy and homicidal just because guns are illegal.

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Mental health issues are everywhere in the world but it seems like the US is the only place this happens on a weekly basis.

GuerrillaPack said:

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So...the Dayton shooter is a supporter of Elizabeth Warren for President and a self-described socialist and Satanist.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/heavy.com/news/2019/08/connor-betts-twitter-politics-social-media/amp/

But I'm "crazy" for talking about the link between the Left and Marxism and Satanism.

And per the leftist Establishment media, we're supposed to believe that the only "solution" to crime is to destroy the Second Amendment, and start confiscating and banning guns. No. That's the communist agenda - disarm the masses, and totally subject the people under an all-powerful State/government.

The problem is not guns, which are a tool. It's wicked people.

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And the El Paso shooter was an avowed right-wing, white supremacist. Who cares!? People are dying on our streets and I don't give a damn if the shooters lean left, right, up, down. This has to stop. It's sickening. A close second is this tripe trying to tie everything to socialism/communism/media bias. That's a very lazy out, to say the least.

statefan91 said:

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curmudgeon.zen said:

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Discussion needs to be about mental health, not gun control. Crazy homicidal folk are not going to stop being crazy and homicidal just because guns are illegal.

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Mental health issues are everywhere in the world but it seems like the US is the only place this happens on a weekly basis.

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If only we knew the difference between the US and the rest of the world on one key issue at play here...

statefan91 said:

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curmudgeon.zen said:

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Discussion needs to be about mental health, not gun control. Crazy homicidal folk are not going to stop being crazy and homicidal just because guns are illegal.

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Mental health issues are everywhere in the world but it seems like the US is the only place this happens on a weekly basis.

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The United States is actually one of the safest places to live, in the entire world. It has a relatively low homicide rate (~5 per 100,000 per year) per the data cited here:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate

Mexico has an almost total gun ban. But it's homicide rate is 5 times higher than the United States. Honduras is also 5 times higher, and Guatemala's is 8 times higher. Venezuela, 11 times higher (~56 per 100,000) In fact, the nations with the highest murder rates in the world are primarily located in central and South America. And these nations are mostly socialist/Marxist "utopias" with very strict gun control. Perhaps opening our borders to unchecked illegal immigration from these countries could be causing an increase in violent crime in the United States.

PackBacker07 said:

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GuerrillaPack said:

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So...the Dayton shooter is a supporter of Elizabeth Warren for President and a self-described socialist and Satanist.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/heavy.com/news/2019/08/connor-betts-twitter-politics-social-media/amp/

But I'm "crazy" for talking about the link between the Left and Marxism and Satanism.

And per the leftist Establishment media, we're supposed to believe that the only "solution" to crime is to destroy the Second Amendment, and start confiscating and banning guns. No. That's the communist agenda - disarm the masses, and totally subject the people under an all-powerful State/government.

The problem is not guns, which are a tool. It's wicked people.

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And the El Paso shooter was an avowed right-wing, white supremacist. Who cares!? People are dying on our streets and I don't give a damn if the shooters lean left, right, up, down. This has to stop. It's sickening. A close second is this tripe trying to tie everything to socialism/communism/media bias. That's a very lazy out, to say the least.

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As cited, far more people die from poisonings every year than from homicides with firearms. You are much more likely, statistically, to die in an automobile accident or an accidental fall than to be killed by someone using a gun.

And here's a HUGE killer: medical/doctor errors -- which now kill 250,000 Americans per year.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_suggests_medical_errors_now_third_leading_cause_of_death_in_the_us

250k killed by doctors. 40k in car wrecks. 75k poisoned.

70,000 Americans are dying every year from drug overdoses:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db329-h.pdf

These are far, far bigger killers than the ~15k killed in murders using a firearm.

But the Leftist Establishment media only hypes gun deaths, and only wants us to be sad and concerned about that, when there are many other far bigger killers. Because they have an agenda to ban guns.

PackBacker07 said:

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I'm sick and damn tired of seeing mass shootings on the news multiple times a month. Something must be done. What the solution is, I do not know. But I also know doing nothing and tweeting "thoughts and prayers" is about as pathetic as it gets. See New Zealand's PM in response to Christchurch. Swift, to the point. Sucks that could never happen here in the States due to partisan BS. These shootings also need to be called out for what they are: domestic terrorism. Which btw affects many more Americans than the "war on terror" we are currently chasing around the globe.

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New Zealand's actions would be unconstitutional in the US. There gun ban was sweeping and retroactive. It would not last in US courts without an amendment. In NZ, it has done nothing other than out lawful sellers out of business. Less than 0.2% of the nation's guns have been turned in. The owners of the other 99.8% are now criminals in the eyes of their government.
They also criminalized possession of the killers manifesto, which would also be unconstitutional here

statefan91 said:

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curmudgeon.zen said:

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Discussion needs to be about mental health, not gun control. Crazy homicidal folk are not going to stop being crazy and homicidal just because guns are illegal.

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Mental health issues are everywhere in the world but it seems like the US is the only place this happens on a weekly basis.

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That's a media myth. Plenty of countries have equal or higher rates of mass shootings than the US. One recent study out us at 66th. It probably underestimated our ranking a bit by cutting off data at 2015, but we are hardly #1 in shootings like the media portrays.
We have the most gun deaths beacuase we have a huge population and most of our gun deaths are suicides. Violent crime and murder using guns has been generally going down the past 25 years and is currently 35% lower than its peak in the 90s

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/mass-shootings-by-country/

I theoretically would support universal background checks, tracking gun sales, and licensing for owners.
That said, I don't think that this would make a major sent on mass shootings. Most shooters would have been able to aquire guns legally even with these restrictions. And it'll be incredibly difficult to convince gun owners to agree to this given so many are scared that licensing and registration is just a precursor to siezure

IseWolf22 said:

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I theoretically would support universal background checks, tracking gun sales, and licensing for owners.
That said, I don't think that this would make a major sent on mass shootings. Most shooters would have been able to aquire guns legally even with these restrictions. And it'll be incredibly difficult to convince gun owners to agree to this given so many are scared that licensing and registration is just a precursor to siezure

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Background checks and licenses for gun ownership are a violation of the Second Amendment. Under the Second Amendment, we have the right to own and carry firearms. The concept of a "license" is that you are doing something that is illegal unless you have obtained permission from the government into order to do it. You do not need permission in order to exercise a God-given right. Imagine applying the concept of background checks or licensure to the other rights listed in the Bill of Rights -- such as the right to freedom of speech or the free exercise of religion. Should we ever have to get a background check before we exercise our right to freedom of speech or free exercise of religion? Or how about getting a license before you can exercise your right to freedom of speech or free exercise of religion?

Background checks for gun purchases were originally passed to check if someone is a convicted felon. But the concept of denying someone their right to own firearms based on a past criminal record is itself a violation of a person's rights under the Second Amendment. If a person has been released from prison, they have presumably "paid their debt to society", and are now "not a threat to society" and have been "restored" to their previous position in society. They should have the right to defend themselves with firearms just like every other citizen.

You cannot compromise with the Marxist/Leftists on the gun issue. Their strategy is to eventually destroy the Second Amendment via incrementally eroding our rights -- ie, keep passing "small", but ever increasing restrictions on gun ownership. But it never stops. They never relax restrictions. They keep pushing to ban more and more classes of firearms, and have ever increasing restrictions on gun ownership. Eventually, they want gun ownership in the United States to be like in most European countries -- where the only guns allowed to the public are single-shot rifles or shotguns, and you have to go through a bunch of hoops and licenses in order to get even those guns. The end goal so that the public are no longer a "threat" to the State/government because they have vastly inferior firearms/weapons in comparison to the (Marxist/totalitarian) State.

a relatively simple step would be to stop dehumanizing and demonizing others for the purpose of gaining some kind of political equity. it seems that there are a lot of people out there who take the hyperbole literally. I think our words and language have escalated tensions to this sort of result.

IseWolf22 said:

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statefan91 said:

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curmudgeon.zen said:

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Discussion needs to be about mental health, not gun control. Crazy homicidal folk are not going to stop being crazy and homicidal just because guns are illegal.

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Mental health issues are everywhere in the world but it seems like the US is the only place this happens on a weekly basis.

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That's a media myth. Plenty of countries have equal or higher rates of mass shootings than the US. One recent study out us at 66th. It probably underestimated our ranking a bit by cutting off data at 2015, but we are hardly #1 in shootings like the media portrays.
We have the most gun deaths beacuase we have a huge population and most of our gun deaths are suicides. Violent crime and murder using guns has been generally going down the past 25 years and is currently 35% lower than its peak in the 90s

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/mass-shootings-by-country/

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The only source I could find from the link you provided was the Crime Prevention Research Center, a site that was founded by John Lott Jr. Here is his twitter bio: "President,Crime Prevention Research Cntr.Author The War on Guns;More Guns,Less Crime(Univ Chi Press,3rd ed);9 books.100+acad articles.FoxNews columnist.PhD econ"

Sort of hard to assess if he has any bias in what his site says and I can't find empirical data for other countries in comparison to the United States. I have family that lives abroad and never hear of the issues and shootings we see on a daily basis, but that's just my experience.

statefan91 said:

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IseWolf22 said:

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That's a media myth. Plenty of countries have equal or higher rates of mass shootings than the US. One recent study out us at 66th. It probably underestimated our ranking a bit by cutting off data at 2015, but we are hardly #1 in shootings like the media portrays.
We have the most gun deaths beacuase we have a huge population and most of our gun deaths are suicides. Violent crime and murder using guns has been generally going down the past 25 years and is currently 35% lower than its peak in the 90s

http://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/mass-shootings-by-country/

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The only source I could find from the link you provided was the Crime Prevention Research Center, a site that was founded by John Lott Jr. Here is his twitter bio: "President,Crime Prevention Research Cntr.Author The War on Guns;More Guns,Less Crime(Univ Chi Press,3rd ed);9 books.100+acad articles.FoxNews columnist.PhD econ"

Sort of hard to assess if he has any bias in what his site says and I can't find empirical data for other countries in comparison to the United States. I have family that lives abroad and never hear of the issues and shootings we see on a daily basis, but that's just my experience.

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Gun violence data is notoriously subject to political bias. It's really hard to find unbiased sources because of the number of different ways you can slice the data. I do not doubt that the source I gave was skewed.

On the flip side, Every Town for Gun Safety is one of the most cited organizations for gun violence data in the media. They blatantly skew facts in their results. For example, their school shooting statistics include instances like a police officer's weapon accidentally discharging into a wall, and a guy killing himself in the parking lot of his former highschool on a weekend with no one around.

But it is factual that gun related homicides have been going down over the past years and are no where near peak levels for the us. We also aren't one of the most dangerous nations for general murder rate. The US really stands out in gun related suicides, and also people going on random/indiscriminate shooting sprees. The latter gets a ton of attention because it's scary and senseless, but it's a tiny fraction of gun deaths. It's also going to be extremely hard to solve via gun laws since most mass shooters are able to legally get weapons, even under the restrictions most people propose.

While I understand the need for the discussion to always immediately go to gun control, it always surprises me that the discussion rarely lands on "why?". Why in the past couple of decades has these types of attacks to become an outlet for disturbed people? Guns have always been around (I'm not saying anything new there), but what is causing this desire to inflict death on a large scale? I'm not buying political leanings or "Satanism", but is it a shift in culture with violent video games, social media with "trolls" who try their hardest to be cruel and indifferent, high divorce rates, and a constant news cycle of who can be more outraged than the other talking heads over every perceived slight?

It always goes to gun control for the answer. I am an owner of several guns and I have no problem with a few more restrictions on purchasing guns. But that won't solve the problem. Sadly there have been so many attacks that I can't even recall exactly which one this was, but one of the school shootings in the past couple of years was with a revolver and a shotgun. None of those would have been classified as an "assault" weapon, so gun control would not have stopped him. At some point we have to start looking at the reasons behind the attacks.

Why does everyone say video games are a cause of these shootings? Kids in Japan and South Korea play the same video games non-stop and they don't have these issues.

JeffreyDurkin said:

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While I understand the need for the discussion to always immediately go to gun control, it always surprises me that the discussion rarely lands on "why?". Why in the past couple of decades has these types of attacks to become an outlet for disturbed people? Guns have always been around (I'm not saying anything new there), but what is causing this desire to inflict death on a large scale? I'm not buying political leanings or "Satanism", but is it a shift in culture with violent video games, social media with "trolls" who try their hardest to be cruel and indifferent, high divorce rates, and a constant news cycle of who can be more outraged than the other talking heads over every perceived slight?

It always goes to gun control for the answer. I am an owner of several guns and I have no problem with a few more restrictions on purchasing guns. But that won't solve the problem. Sadly there have been so many attacks that I can't even recall exactly which one this was, but one of the school shootings in the past couple of years was with a revolver and a shotgun. None of those would have been classified as an "assault" weapon, so gun control would not have stopped him. At some point we have to start looking at the reasons behind the attacks.

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Exactly. The Establishment media and Democrat party ONLY push gun bans and gun control. They never address the real roots of violence. We've had free access to firearms in the United States for over 400 years, and much easier access prior to the last 40-50 years. And during that period (pre 1970s), we had extremely low crime in America. In the 1950s and 60s, school children would take their rifles to public schools, and have firearms training and practice.

Of course, the real causes of crime involve many factors - including the culture, ethics/morality of the society or lack thereof, and the type of people in the society. If you look at Japan, for instance, they have an extremely low crime rate, which probably corresponds to their social/ethical norms and even the genetic characteristics of the Japanese people.

Of course not every murderer is a self-described Satanist. But what I'm getting at is that the anti-Christian and "secular" culture is rooted in a Satanic agenda. And when you are teaching a secular agenda in the schools that "there is no God", and we are all just an "organic accident" of "evolution and the Big Bang", that is bound to cause people to de-value human life. If you remove God, there are no moral absolutes, and there is no basis for any absolute moral standards, including prohibitions against murder, stealing, etc.

statefan91 said:

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Why does everyone say video games are a cause of these shootings? Kids in Japan and South Korea play the same video games non-stop and they don't have these issues.

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The research here is pretty one sided. No one can show that violent video games increase propensity to violence

Why do people only focus on shootings with a certain gun? If one is going to stand for gun-control, stand for gun-control. Not just for a certain gun that doesn't even kill the most people per year.

And the El Paso shooting had a manifesto with basically words pulled from Donald trumps hate speech

JocoPack said:

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Why do people only focus on shootings with a certain gun? If one is going to stand for gun-control, stand for gun-control. Not just for a certain gun that doesn't even kill the most people per year.

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I haven't seen any mention of the guns used in the Gilroy, El Paso, or Dayton shootings. What kind were they?

My guess is if they are focused on a certain gun, it's because a certain gun / type of gun is repeatedly used in mass shootings?

The El Paso shooter had a ak-47. The Dayton shooter had a .223 caliber with several 100 shot clips

No one especially me wants your gun. But you don't need a ak-47 with a large capacity clip to hunt with. I have a glock and if you come in my house you will be dead after 2 shots. I may then empty the clip in you just to make a statement

AK-47 variant was used in El Paso I believe. My thing is that these types of guns account for about 1% of all gun-related deaths per year. Why are they the ones that get people charged up to ban? Wouldn't you theoretically save more lives by banning handguns?

Glasswolf said:

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The El Paso shooter had a ak-47. The Dayton shooter had a .223 caliber with several 100 shot clips

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The El Paso shooter did not have an ak-47. Automatic AK-47s are illegal.
He had an SKS, a semi-auto rifle that looks somewhat similar. It has a 10 round magazine that isn't detachable.

Did he have multiple guns? I haven't read any of the specifics around it but if it's not detachable I assume he had other weapons if he was unfortunately able to kill 21 people in such a short amount of time.

no easy answers or solutions. seems to me to the root cause is the increasing amount of hatred we seem to have in this country... on both sides. it's sad to see.

IseWolf22 said:

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Glasswolf said:

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The El Paso shooter had a ak-47. The Dayton shooter had a .223 caliber with several 100 shot clips

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The El Paso shooter did not have an ak-47. Automatic AK-47s are illegal.
He had an SKS, a semi-auto rifle that looks somewhat similar. It has a 10 round magazine that isn't detachable.

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My mistake for posting between meetings. Actually the SKS was used in the Gilroy shooting. I got my wires crossed.

It doesn't look like anyone has reported what was used in El Paso yet. Police have confirmed it was some type of rifle. News outlets have reported it as an "AK-47 style assault weapon." That's kinda meaningless. All we can assume now is it was a semi-automatic rifle. Fully automatic rifles, including AK-47s are illegal. So, statefan91, I don't know about the magazines.

Edit to add, it looks like he used a WASR 10 semi-automatic rifle.