Another day, another mass shooting
 

Please be patient while citizens exercise their constitutional rights.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45315970

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

I'm no Constitutional scholar but I'm rather certain that homicide is not a Constitutionally protected right.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

SkyNews is reporting three dead including the killer. https://news.sky.com/story/live-mass...ament-11483201

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Was an event but was being hosted in a pizza restaurant rather than a large scale gig so security isn't that questionable here. Was a pistol so again easily concealed.

It was actually being streamed live. A laser sight briefly appears on a competitors chest before shots ring out. Presumably the two people on camera are those dead and the gunman then shot off his capacity before shooting himself.

Allegedly but now seemingly true since they've identified him, he was a fellow competitor that lost... A video game. His identity and that story were already leaking via people at the event before police confirmed his name.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Give it a short while and it will all happen all over again sadly.:(

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

It's their country, let them get on with shooting each other. It's what they voted for.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Quite. :dozey:

But the constitution does nothing to make these things less likely, does it?

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

We should ban any NRA or pro-NRA from entering the UK.

I would go as far as treating it as a terrorist organisation.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

The Constitution was not enacted so that the government could manage the people. It was enacted so that the people could manage the government. The fundamental principle of American is (or at least was) that individual liberty must be preserved. Among the rights necessary to preserve individual liberty is the right to self defense. That is why the 2nd Amendment is so fiercely defended.

Any weapon which can be used for self defense can, naturally, be used offensively as well. The question, therefore, is how substantially do we want to restrict the very fundamental right of self defense in an effort to mitigate the possibility of an offensive attack. The answer to that question for a great number of Americans is "not very much".

With more than 300 million citizens and a rate of gun ownership around 25% one would think that if guns are the problem then the US homicide rate should be astronomical. It isn't. It's roughly 4 times as high as the homicide rate in the UK but if you look a little deeper you will also find that a limited number of metropolitan areas [and limited neighborhoods in those metropolitan areas] account for the vast majority of that rate. Cities like New Orleans, Baltimore and St. Louis have astronomical homicide rates while other cities have much lower rates. Even in the same state there are dramatic differences. San Diego, California has a homicide rate not that different than the UK while Los Angeles has a murder rate nearly 4 times higher. The same gun laws apply in both cities. Both cities heavily restrict gun ownership. Why then is the homicide rate so different?

If you really want to discuss the relationship between guns and homicide that difference between San Diego and Los Angeles needs to be part of the discussion. Likewise, it would need to be explained why Baltimore, in a state with draconian gun laws, has a homicide rate 5 times higher than Phoenix, in a state with nearly no gun laws. Basically, it isn't guns or gun ownership rates that determine homicide rate. It's something else or, likely, a combination of many things. Blaming homicide rates on guns is simply lazy and leads to laws which restrict the right of law abiding citizens while doing little to impact people inclined toward criminal activity anyway and/or crazy people.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Oh look, the NRA rode into town. :dozey:

To be honest I lack the inclination to argue this with any American gun advocate. By the very fact of being an American gun advocate you’re intentionally blind to the phenomenon of regular mass civilian shooting, a phenomenon that is almost uniquely American in the developed world. Intentional blindness is something an Internet discussion isn’t going to cure.

I will simply observe that local variations in gun law in the USA are, as far as I can see, irrelevant to the argument - if not a deliberate red herring - because there are no internal borders in the USA preventing guns being bought in one place and used in another. Thus any attempt to draw false comparisons between one city’s murder rate and its gun laws, and that of another, is a bit of a waste of time. But then, as I said, the whole debate is a bit of a waste of time. Far too many Americans seem to see the occasional mass slaughter of their fellow citizens as an acceptable price of freedom.

You have a collective sickness of the soul.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Not every one in the UK is anti-gun .

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

No l don't doubt that but tell me what is justifiable about 25% of the American population owning guns? as in a decent civilised society the bullshit about the rights of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed is a load of hogwash..

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Your asking me to justify the constitution of the USA, that's a subject best left to the people of the USA. If they didn't want guns there would be no guns , the fact that there are so many indicates they want gun ownership to continue .

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

I am a UK citizen and pro gun, too.

You have a thing / fetish for trying to bar Brits from living in their own country, don't you?

(Oh, and yes btw...I used to be a gun owner and I may become one again yet).

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Ironically Democratic Presidents are better for the gun industry because the sales go up as gun lovers worry that restrictions will be put in place.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Oh I dunno. When Moses went up to Mount Sinai and came back with a couple of stones, one said on it:

Thou shalt not kill

If that didn't deter folks from killing one another, what hope does the US constitution have?

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

What an ridiculous thing to say.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

If they didn't want mass shootings there would be no mass shootings, the fact that there are so many indicates they want mass shootings to continue...

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

I think you've out done yourself there ,you should get a special prize for that post .;)

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

So assuming that the number is 25% (not sure if it is or not), why do any of those said individuals have to justify their choice (and right) of owning a gun, to you? (Or anyone else for that matter).

You also have the right to own a gun, in the UK. You don't have to justify your reasoning to anyone, either.

I don't even know where to begin with that....

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Americans also have laws against illegal drug use yet they are suffering an epidemic of heroin addiction. Even if guns were completely banned in the nation there would still be gun violence because, like drugs, people want guns. As I said before, the VAST majority of American gun owners want guns for sport and personal protection. Every time there is media attention regarding a shooting more Americans come to the conclusion that it's to their benefit to be armed in case they are confronted with a homicidal maniac.

While likely not indicative of a universal result for more liberal firearms laws I would cite the case of Arizona as an example of what MIGHT happen when the freedom to carry firearms is extended. Arizona had a homicide rate that climbed consistently from the 1960's to the 1990's. By the mid 1990's the homicide rate had climbed to more than 10/100k. Around that time the political powers that be started looking at other options for curbing violence. They enacted harsher penalties for violent crime, increased law enforcement in problem areas and, in 2003, removed any requirement for anyone in Arizona to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon. In the 15 years that followed this change the homicide rate dropped in half and is now at or below where it was in the 1960's.

On a national level, the homicide rate in the US INCREASED for the 25 years following the 1968 Gun Control Act which mandated special rules for sellers of firearms and identified circumstances by which someone could be prohibited from possessing a firearm. The homicide rate did start to come down in the mid 1990's with the implementation of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. While there was an "assault weapon" ban associated with the act the primary reason for the decrease in crime seems to have been the overall crackdown on crime. New sentencing guidelines were implemented as were laws related to ones membership in a gang. With regard to the "assault weapons" ban, that portion of the law phased out in 2004 and the homicide rate STILL continued to drop.

In all fairness, at the same time the VCCLE act was implemented so was the Brady Bill which required background checks for firearms purchases through a federally licensed seller. It can be argued that this act also contributed to the decline in the homicide rate but the evidence for that is scant as it can be as easily circumvented as an underage person getting someone to buy beer or liquor for them.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Remington (OC) filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this year (don't worry, they should survive just fine) but for the most part what is good for the back pocket is the anxiety and distress of the actual gun owner (or lover as you call them).

I.e. the reason for folks stocking up on ammunition and what not, is that a President leery of the second amendment might try and put wholesale bans in place.

That gives most gun owners strife for no reason. (Especially when it never goes anywhere). That causes a run on everything, boosting the profits for gun stores and the demand is higher so it causes manufacturers to produce more.

When there is calm over the issue (like with Trump and Bush being President) the peace of mind for the general gun owning population can sometimes come at the expense of manufacturers back pockets.

The two usually are an equidistant paradox of one another.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Just following your ‘logic’, so we’ll have to share the prize... ;)

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

They don't have to justify anything to me or anybody else but to their own consciences as if they are happy to close their eyes and ears to the massacres and countless lives lost through lax and liberal gun laws in America then sadly the killings and massacres will go on and on sadly.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Ummm....their constituents are likely the ones who are happy to be gun owners in the first place. That is not what is the reason for the massacres.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Why does one want a gun unless it is used for certain pastimes or other important purposes through licensing as tell me as how many massacres do we get in this country as the answer is not many as our gun laws are far stricter and this country is far better for that IMO.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

I don't know about massacre Den but just a week or two back a dozen odd folks were shot in Manchester:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...chester-police

Granted, that is Moss Side but still...

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

He did say ‘not many’, not ‘none’...

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

He? I thought Den was a woman!

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

I’m guessing those protesting students have actually got the NRA rattled.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Hardly, this happens every time that there is a mass casualty event. Eventually, once the hysteria dies down, things go back to normal.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Nobody wants mass shootings to continue. The issue is with regard to how to mitigate such events without unduly infringing on the rights of law abiding citizens.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Oh don't worry he didn't really mean it to come out like that - he was just retorting the same logic back at Papa Smurf.

Hugh is a brave man. To live in Yorkshire and know how to use sarcasm...even I had to read it twice today morning, lol.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

As Chloe stated...

https://www.cableforum.uk/images/local/2018/08/10.gif

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

The issue is what Americans perceive to be their rights, coupled to their perception of how those rights are best preserved.

There is no universal law that holds you as a human being have the right to possess a lethal firearm against the possibility your life may be endangered.

Your constitution was framed and amended by men in a specific historical context, with a particular agenda, and the way in which it is fetishised and venerated by so many of you, some 3 centuries later, is frankly a tad disturbing.

Your founding fathers asserted rights in the way that best served their purposes: Create a nation state by union of the colonies; keep the Brits out. That’s really all there is to it. Asserting that a self-evident right to bear arms exists (via the negative formulation, that it not be infringed) served that agenda.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Yeah this is something which is the rare exception for guns ; they serve a very specific purpose...which is to "fire" them / shoot. Granted the same for other things used as a weapon (in modern crime) do serve another purpose (cars for transport, knives for food etc). With guns, it is to fire them.

I suppose that you could have weapons for trade purposes but for the most part a gun does not serve an originating metric / mechanism that is different than what a criminal would use it for. (I.e to fire the gun). The reasoning behind it is different, the desired outcome is intended to be different and the entire purposes and philosophy is different but both time the use of the machine / appliance (in this instance, the gun) is the same.

Now you tell me whether it is justifiable or not to prevent all of us who do not intent to use it for criminal purposes to be prevented from possessing it, altogether.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Okay so, gun crime has seen a 20% increase, this year alone:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/597170...y-forest-gate/

How is that any proof that the ban on guns lowers even gun crime?

Leave alone crime in general just gun related crime.

Just 6 months (this year):

• • February 12 Taxi driver Bulent Kabala, 41, shot dead on a roundabout in Enfield
  • March 8 Kelvin Odunuyi, 19, shot in Wood Green amid escalating gang warfare
  • March 14 Joseph Williams-Torres, 20, shot dead in a stationary car in Walthamstow
  • March 17 Student Russell Jones shot and stabbed to death near Ponders End station in Enfield.
  • March 25 Abraham Badru, 26, shot in Dalston, East London, without warning
  • April 2 Tanesha Melbourne, 17, gunned down by drug gang in Tottenham
  • April 2 Amaan Shakoor, 16, shot in the face outside Walthamstow Leisure Centre
  • April 9 An armed man was shot dead by police in Romford after threatening people with a gun near a petrol station
  • May 1 A 30-year-old man died outside Queensbury Tube station in North London after being found with serious injuries
  • May 5 Rhyhiem Ainsworth Barton was gunned down in a drive by shooting near his home in Kennington, South London
  • May 6 Man, 22, is shot in New Cross, South East London
  • May 6 Boy, 13, blasted in head with shotgun while walking with his parents in Wealdstone, near Harrow, in North West London, as 15-year-old also injured in the head in the shooting
  • June 1 A 24-year-old man is fighting for his life after being shot with a "machine gun" in Brent, north-west London
  • June 3 Oluwafemi Omosuyi, 22, airlifted to hospital in Southwark, South London, after witnesses reported he was shot in the face with a shotgun. another man, 25, suffered non-life-threatening injuries
  • June 6 A teenage boy was left fighting for his life after he and two others were shot in Brixton at around 11pm
  • July 9 Gunman shoots three times at woman, but misses
  • July 27 Four men aged between 20 and 22 were arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after exchanging gun fire with police in Forest Gate
  • August 20 Armed police swarm a school in Maida Hill, West London, after "shots fired" as terrified staff cower in classroom cupboard
  • August 20 A woman, 30, and two men - aged 18 and 24 - were rushed to hospital following a drive-by shooting outside Kingsbury Tube station

So guns are banned, and there have been 7000 incidents involving guns:

Btw this from both left and right leaning sources:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...-a8177161.html

Den lauding it up as far as something to look down his / her nose at Americans is totally misplaced.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

l am certainly not lauding anything up or looking down my nose at Americans or anybody else Chloe as l am just giving my own thoughts on the matter as you and others are.

l never said that l had the answers but other then those personal uses for guns under strong licensing laws which l mentioned in a previous post there is no justification in a civilised country for having widespread personal ownership of firearms.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Where to begin ....

For starters, if you want to compare the UK and the USA, bald percentages are useless. They take no account of starting points and they don’t allow for differing definitions of ‘gun crime’. The simpler and clearer way of doing it would be to take a simple, comparable metric -e.g. people criminally injured or killed by firearms - and then compare those statistics per 100,000 of population.

Second, a number of the gun crimes in your list feature firearms that may be legally bought and owned in the UK. If you’re wanting to compare the UK and the USA, you have to compare like with like. Pick something that’s legal in the USA but banned here and determine whether there’s a statistically significant difference in the number of people criminally killed or wounded by those items, again, per 100,000 of the population. That way, you may begin to determine whether the ban makes a difference.

Third, in any case your list is a collection of headlines that you’ve managed to Google up in the time available to you when making your post. Neither the size of the list nor the severity of the incidents on it have any useful statistical value. What they do have is shock value, which lends some superficial credibility to your argument.

Fourth, the claim of a 20% upswing in lethal firearms ‘fired’ since 2012 is problematic. Why 2012? There was no significant change in legislation that year, except for exemptions granted to allow certain Olympic events to function. Pistols except .22 calibre were banned by the Major government after Dunblane and the rest were banned by Blair a couple of years later. Without having read into it, I suspect we would find that 2012 either corresponds to some police budgeting or staffing issue, or else it might have been a historic low point. Either way, I’d bet that the year was chosen for political reasons, to maximise the apparent severity of the problem. A 20% increase on a historic low, for example, sounds awful but without proper historical context may be highly misleading.

Finally - and assuming the 20% statistic is useful at face value - we still know nothing of causality. The figure is very carefully presented as shots fired, not guns in circulation. The author appears to suggest that guns already in circulation are being used more often, not that more guns are getting into the country. There are various reasons why shots fired may increase but the most likely scenario I can see is that criminals are emboldened by the belief that they can get away with it. As the average British citizen is unarmed, this can only be due to perception of police resources, and not the likelihood of a potential victim firing back, which would be a factor in the USA.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Well you do. You have to justify it to the police.

---------- Post added at 13:54 ---------- Previous post was at 13:50 ----------

Mass shootings in the US are ‘normal’

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...s-gun-violence

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Oh, I missed this before.
You do have to justify it, to obtain a license.
Being a member of a shooting club for target shooting is an accepted reason.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Yeah, as in give them a valid reason for wanting it.

I meant Den didn't have to justify his right to have it.

Okay so the crimes are technically defined as different terms, so yeah we can look at raw numbers, yes.

How do you prove a negative, though? The M4 is not banned in the UK, but the fact that it hasn't been used in a mass shooting in the UK is hardly indicative proof that the UK made the right call in not banning the weapon.

The AR 15 is banned in the UK but not in the US but it hardly proves that banning it in the UK has meant that there are no mass atrocities in the UK involving that gun, because banning it was the correct thing to do.

Conversely double barrel shotguns are legal in the UK. Moat used one, killed a person and injured a couple more a few years ago. Makes zero difference as to whether the weapon is banned.

Actually, partly true. After post 6 (let them kill each other) kind of posts I figured that I might need to dumb it down, some. Couldn't think of much worse than the Sun. I figured someone may accuse me of bias in the Sun (leaning right) so I had to find the same story (article) in the Guardian.

I didn't google the ones that I knew about anyway - Moss Side wasn't too far from where I grew up so when I heard about it the other weekend I thought "yup, another success in Britain's gun ban". As for the rest - some remind me of you because you are just north of Watford - a lot of them (Kingsbury / Queensbury etc) are very close to you (locality wise / other side of Stanmore). Thanks to the irritating "Google trending" options that you can't disable on older phones every time you tap the app on a 6.0 or older phone, you get the latest sensationalist stuff from there.

I.e. gun crime stories. It is not so much that I use a google search of stuff as much as the sensationalist headlines are much more in tune with gun control.

See why I hate Redwood now? Had it not been for his nonsense Major may yet have survived 97. Granted Blair was romping to a landslide anyway but instead of letting the *******s win, the *******s gave us a weapons ban instead. Everything other than .22 were banned and then Blair came along, banned the rest and what happened in 2010? Derrick Bird killed 12 people with .22 rifle.

We can look into the 2012 stats when we get a bit more time, yes - for now this is kind of a rushed reply (and it might show lol).

That is something that I was going to say at the end of post 37 ; the one difference is that Americans generally will be armed enough to fire back.

This likely does warrant a longer response that I don't have the time for now (was going to reply later on this week / next) but a lot of the discussion here is different from the way it started off with "let them kill each other / here come the NRA". Plus it went from philosophy to empirical statistics, which will likely take some time to get into further / with some depth.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Did you really just suggest that the threat of getting shot back at might deter someone from using a gun to commit a crime? That's actually something I'd agree with, at least in general terms. We'll make an NRA member out of you yet!

---------- Post added at 02:55 ---------- Previous post was at 02:48 ----------

Walking around armed isn't exactly an "American" thing. Many states have substantial restrictions regarding who can carry, what manner they can carry in and where they can carry. The same applies to certain municipalities.

While I can carry a concealed weapon most places in Arizona (don't even need a permit) I definitely can not do so in California or New York. If I lived upstate New York I could, with an appropriate permit, carry my firearm most places. However, when I enter New York City that changes and I'd need a completely separate permit to carry there. The laws regarding carrying a firearm in public vary dramatically across the country and have caused a great number of otherwise law abiding people to unwittingly run afoul of the authorities.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Right, so you are basically saying that America is not a civilized nation. Fine, you are not lauding it over anyone but I do think that you are looking down your nose at a nation that you see as less "civilized".

You seem like a perfectly pleasant individual so perhaps I am interpreting this incorrectly, so my apologies, if I am. The way I am reading what you are writing though is that just because you see no need for an armed populace, you think of those who are as less civilized, per your metric definition.

I don't have all the time to get into it now but as when I do, I'll get back to this and am happy to listen to whatever rationale you meant by what you said.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

l think you know exactly what my meaning is l am certainly not looking down my nose at America as it is a fantastic country with many good people but the American psyche and approach with regards to guns is wedded blindly to the past IMO and that is the less civilised bit.

---------- Post added at 05:37 ---------- Previous post was at 05:32 ----------


Why does a country need a armed populace? unless individuals need a gun for the reasons l have stated in earlier posts through strict licensing gun laws.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

This is just another false argument that doesn't stack up. The number of times a member of the public has stopped a mass shooting because they themselves were armed is so infinitesimal compared to the volume of mass shootings in the US that you can hardly call it a number.

This link, which is supportive, can still only cite 24 occasions in 30 years where an armed civilian has ended or prevented a mass shooting.

http://memepoliceman.com/list-of-mas...med-civilians/

Compare that to the 1,624 mass shootings that there were in just the last 5 years!

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...s-gun-violence

I don't know how many mass shootings there have been in the last 30 years, but if you extrapolate from the last 5 you would get something like 9,700.

24 is 0.2% so a educated estimate of how many mass shootings have been stopped by armed civilians is a whopping 0.2%

The reasons are obvious:

- Most people (even if they have a licence to carry a gun/own a gun) don't take them to church, cinema, school, concert etc.

- Even if they did have a gun on them, the panic and confusion would probably prevent them from pinpointing the shooter

- the shooter may have an AR15 or other automatic weapon and the civilian just a hand gun

- Joe public is generally not Dirty Harry, and if someone is shooting, 99% of people, even if they have a gun, would not run towards the gunfire.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

:clap:

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Isn’t it funny how facts can kill a discussion stone dead. The silence is deafening..................................

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

You are right.

When someone mentions banning or controlling guns, there is the usual flurry of indignant responses citing freedom, the Constitution, defending your home, etc. The argument gets deflected and muddled, as intended, so that the specifics of any gun control suggestion get lost and when the smoke dies down, no progress is made. This all by design.

However, when someone cuts through the smokescreen and gets to the specifics, like your post, the silence is, as you say, deafening.

3 weeks ago, I made a similar post in another thread. Again, no responses ...

The Gun Lobby strategy is clear & deliberate: take it to an emotional place and obfuscate the argument until you have either worn down your opponent or rundown the time available.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

or perhaps everyone just got bored of the same thing being posted again and again.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

That's pretty much the case. This argument has been had repeatedly.

First, if someone stops a mass shooting before it becomes a mass shooting then no mass shooting occurred so those who wish to ban guns don't count it in their statistics.

Second, the majority of mass shootings occur in places where lawful gun owners are prohibited from carrying firearms. If a lawful gun owner is prevented from being armed then they really can't stop anything.

Third, it's nearly axiomatic that when a rampage shooter is engaged by an armed defender they "self terminate". The anti-gun crowd generally doesn't count that as an armed responder stopping the massacre.

For example, in 2012 a 20 year old kid with an AR-15 went into a shopping mall in Clackamas Oregon. The kid shot up the area outside a department store killing two people. He was confronted by a civilian who was carrying a concealed handgun. The civilian didn't shoot because of the potential to hit someone in the crowd but the assailant took that opportunity to head into a stairwell and commit suicide. The event isn't considered to be a "mass shooting" because less than 4 people were killed.

Last November a deranged man walked into a Costco (warehouse style retail store) in Lenexa, Kansas. The man announced that he was an off duty US Marshall and that he was there to kill people. An off duty Kansas City police officer confronted the deranged man, ordered him to drop the gun and killed him when the suspect turned to shoot. Again, no mass shooting will get counted because no mass shooting occurred. In this case it was stopped before it even got started.

In June of 2016 a man started shooting at a crowd outside a nightclub in Lyman, South Carolina. Someone in the vicinity was armed and returned fire. The shooter was struck in the leg and stopped shooting. Again, it isn't counted as a mass shooting because it doesn't fit the criteria.

When impossible or unrealistic parameters are put on any reply to a given argument it becomes useless to respond.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

In that case, Paul, you had better shutdown the forum :) The place is littered with people doing this ...

---------- Post added at 07:52 ---------- Previous post was at 07:37 ----------

No, not really. The argument has not been had but the successful attempts at misdirection have.

What are the "impossible or unrealistic parameters"? Please elaborate ..

You (again) have avoided the main problem i.e. the access to semi-automatic weapons by civilians. Look at the guns used in the most deadly mass shootings:

Deadliest mass shootings since 1949

If these were banned, in the same way as fully automatics are then the numbers of people killed would reduce.

You are obviously in favour of Gun ownership so I will ask this question yet again: why do gun owners in the US need, not want, semi-automatic weapons? Just to clear so we don't go down the rathole of "they want to take away all my guns!", I am discussing gun categories that fall outside of the group deemed appropriate to defend you, your family and your home.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

The most common reason for wanting (needing) a semi-automatic weapon is to defend one's self from an attacker armed with a semi-automatic weapon and/or multiple assailants. Since the early 1900s the semi-automatic handgun, and later the semi-automatic rifle, have been the most commonly produced firearms. As such, they are the type of weapon one would most likely encounter in an attack. Being armed with a single shot pistol in an engagement against 3 attackers puts the defender at a serious disadvantage.

This disadvantage was recognized well before the invention of the semi-automatic firearm. It was not at all uncommon for an infnatryman using a musket to be supported by a loader and two or more backup weapons. The infantryman would fire a round, hand the musket off, take a loaded one and fire again as the first weapon was reloaded. In later years this lead to the development of the cartridge which improved loading times compared to component loads.

I would also note that firearms are not required to commit a mass casualty attack. In 2014, in Kunming, China, 8 assailants stabbed to death 31 bystanders and injured another 140. The attackers, by the way, were stopped by a responder with either a fully automatic or semi-automatic firearm. THAT is the purpose of modern firearms and that is why self defense minded people want and need them.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

In a sane society with strict control of lethal weapons, you do not need one. You just don’t. It depresses me that you wrote that first paragraph in all seriousness and without any awareness whatsoever of how unhinged you sound in the ears of just about anyone who lives in a stable democracy other than America.

You *want* one; all else is self-serving waffle. You aren’t self-defence minded, you’re just self obsessed, determined to defend an idea of freedom that is about as far as it is possible to get from the desire for self-determination felt by the white Europeans who founded your country.

As I’ve said already, your society has a sickness deep in its soul. The so-called gun control debate is so far from rational that I’m just glad that it’s not my fight.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

In the pas 10 years there have been mass shootings in Germany, Belgium, Austria, France, Italy and the UK. No nation is immune from such an occurrence. Historically, Europeans have had a much lower rate of gun crime than the US has. Overall crime rates aren't that much different and, unless I'm seriously mistaken, the homicide rate in the UK actually INCREASED for the 5 years after the 1997 act. While that increase has since reversed it would appear that the act isn't what caused the decrease but, rather, a cultural aversion to homicide.

In the US the homicide rate is driven primarily by gang culture (suicide is the single largest factor in gun deaths but that's a different matter). Certain neighborhoods in certain cities tend to heavily skew the homicide rate. It is the resistance of local authorities in those areas to actively enforce laws which facilitates those homicides. Ultimately the difference is cultural, not a matter of the rate of gun ownership.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

I think the most common reason is an extension of one genitalia. Buy a sports car instead.

---------- Post added at 22:36 ---------- Previous post was at 22:31 ----------

That has to one of the most bizarre sentences I have read. “ a cultural aversion to homicide”

I Just keep reading it back to myself. Surely aversion to homicide is normal human nature.


Are you suggestion the USA has a cultural passion for homicide?

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

One would certainly think that a cultural aversion to homicide is ubiquitous. Unfortunately, that's not the case. In the culture of drug gangs homicide is considered to be part of the deal if not an actual virtue.

As far as sports cars go, I've got one. I'm also satisfied with my genitals. Admittedly, I do have a bit of disagreement with my bladder at 2am from time to time but that's not really a genitals issue.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Citation, please?

I have tried looking for the source of that stat, and the most commonly quoted source is a CDC press release - http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_06.pdf

There is nothing in that press release to support the 80% statistic.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

First, I'm not sure where you came up with anything "80%". My claim was that the homicide rate, excluding suicides, was driven by gang violence.

While there are several studies by ostensibly partisan groups available I prefer to go with something simple from the US Center for Disease Control. This study is a bit dated but I'll link to source data that is current. - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6103a2.htm

It should be noted that "Gang Violence", as defined for this study, does not include victims who were affiliated with a gang but died from an incident not directly related to gang activity -
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nvdrs/faqs.html

This can create a "Gang Violence" category that is underreported because many gang related homicides will then fall into the "Arguments" or "Drug Involvement" categories, both of which are often tied to gang activity.

This data - https://wisqars.cdc.gov:8443/nvdrs/nvdrsController.jsp
gives an overview of homicides by circumstance for 5 relatively low crime states. The data from the study cited in the first link covers certain high crime cities but uses the same definition of "Gang Violence".

Because of the narrow definition of "Gang Violence" used in these studies it's difficult to come up with hard data. The CDC study, however, emphasizes gang activity as a significant factor in, especially, the youth homicide rate.

This study by the National Gang Center (also a government entity) is a bit more clear regarding the impact of gangs on homicide rate, especially in more populated cities - https://www.nationalgangcenter.gov/s...-gang-problems
-edit-
I noticed that one of the links goes to a data page that can't render outside of my search. The search parameters for that link were entered from this page - https://wisqars.cdc.gov:8443/nvdrs/nvdrsDisplay.jsp - and included:
1. Violent death counts by Known Circumstances
2. Checked off only Homicide
3 & 4 were "all"
5. was all years, all states, all everything else

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

A depressing but not unsurprising revelation that the Supreme Court nominee is a Gun Nut:

https://twitter.com/igorvolsky/statu...54753896992769

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

What he actually said was

I hate to point out the obvious but who would use a handgun for hunting?

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

Actually, in the US there are a lot of people that use handguns for hunting. Many states have established a hunting season specifically for handguns.

For some hunters, part of the sport is stalking the prey to get as close as possible. There is, from a practical standpoint, very little difference between hunting with a handgun and hunting with a bow and arrow.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

My son does he calls it his finishing off pistol, it's used in cases where you don't get a kill shot .


Not on people just to be clear.

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

I thought hunting handguns were specialised, so different from ordinary handguns (not so useful for self-defence), in that they often have extended barrels and scopes fitted, and are often single-shot?

Re: Another day, another mass shooting
 

They generally do have longer barrels and some people use scopes but single shot isn't usually part of the equation.

Thompson Center makes some of the better hunting pistols and they are single shot but Thompson's claim to fame is in quality and the fact that many of their models can be reconfigured to fire an assortment of cartridges (including some rifle cartridges). Aside from that, most hunters will pick their firearm based on what they plan to hunt and the most appropriate cartridge for that game. The Browning Buckmark, for example, is a popular choice in .22lr which is appropriate for small game such as rabbits. The Buckmark is a semi-auto.

Larger game, obviously, requires a larger, heavier hitting round and revolvers are often the choice for hunting medium and larger game. Cartridges from .357 Magnum to .454 Casull tend to be popular. Revolvers such as the Ruger Super Redhawk and the S&W Model 629 would commonly be used for deer and even bear.