Is it time to talk about guns?

Dear Piobare & Zen:

Anything in all of those reports about legal vs illegal firearms?

 

In the mythical time you refer to (“where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”) the average infantry weapon had a maximum effective range of 100 yards and a rate of fire of 4 rounds a minute. In 2019 in Dayton, Ohio, some knucklehead (the NRA's mythical "good guy with a gun"...until suddenly, he wasn't) opened fire on a crowd with a perfectly legal, short-barreled, "pistol" version of the AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle (which had been expressly designed for the U.S. military) with a perfectly legal 100 round drum magazine. He was shot and killed by police in 32 seconds. In those 32 seconds, he shot 26 people.
This isn't the 1850's and this isn't the wild, wild West; where we carried out a campaign of genocide against the First Nations people, massacred Abolitionists in Kansas and Missouri, and homicide was so common 'murder ballads' became a whole genre of American folk music and firefights a staple of American cinema. When stripped of it's nationalistic and White supremacist nostalgia and romanticism, that was really a quite barbarous time to model our current values upon. This is the 21st century, and there's absolutely no legitimate reason in a modern, civilized society for any civilian to ever have that degree of lethality at their fingertips.

 

My belief in this mess is not how they got the weapon nor what its capability is. To ME this boils down to why did they chose to do it. Why are so many people just in the past year or two choosing to take the lives of others and themselves at a rapidly growing rate! Most if not, all use the excuse they were bullied harassed. We have all been a victim of something, but we all don't go on a rampage. There are people who grew up with lots of guns and as adults own a armory full yet would never use one in this way. We all need to look at how we raise and educate or children and how we as adults act and treat each other! I personally see a slow devastation of our civilization

 

Want to guess how strong the statistical association would be between the number of weapons in a society designed only for killing people and the number of mass shootings and plain old murders by those weapons? Clue…look at societies in Europe and our neighbors to the North.

 

Needless to say, the police are up in arms over the new bill

 

Light-years beyond tragic......such a sad, senseless waste of life.

When six-year old kids are bringing a gun to school and shooting their teachers, you KNOW it is HIGH time to institute SERIOUS gun-control laws, and to STICK to them.

My prayers with the unfortunate child's family.

TOO MANY guns....and TOO MANY misguided individuals owning them.......

"Live long and prosper"

 

Who determines whether or not the entries are illegal? (Rhetorical question)

 

I think the Second Amendment permits us all to own nuclear weapons if we're rich enough to afford them. (Elon Musk, are you listening?) Just kidding, but why not?

 

what law can you make to keep a kid from getting a gun from his parents house and killing someone with it?

 

That is a good point, also.

All the more reason why, in households where guns are owned, parents MUST be VERY vigilant, and keep the gun locked away, where a child cannot access it.......

"Live long and prosper"

 

An 'assualt rifle' is a fully automatic weapon that can not be purchased by the average citizen. Takes special permits. If he only injured 26 people in 32 seconds, then he was picking and choosing who he shot. That same gun can sit on a table for hours and not move. It takes someone that is not mentally disturbed to pick up that weapon and cause injuries and death. It's not the gun that is the problem. If you want laws, then make laws that are strict against anyone that uses a gun to inflict harm and a law to get mentally disturbed people off the streets.

 

Good luck with that. Oh…that it should be that simple. Our friends north of 49 degrees and down under are a lot more pragmatic and have correspondingly lower firearms deaths…by a lot.

 

As a UK citizen I can’t pretend to understand USA gun law but it seems utter madness to me to allow any American to be able to buy and own an assault rifle regardless of whether they have a special permit or not. Unless you are in the military then why would any citizen need an assault rifle?