Originally Posted by Guest

I have taken the liberty of numbering your paragraphs to make it clear which area of your post I am responding to with each of my points.

1. Thank you for acknowledging that the points in my earlier post were valid. I strive for accuracy. Your reaction to the recent shooting, that we must "do something" is a common emotional response, but it ignores the fact that there is virtually no law that you can propose which would have stopped the shooting. If you have such a law in mind, please post it.

2. The level of firearms technology at the time of adoption of the Second Amendment is not relevant to the conversation unless you are proposing that we should be limited to possession of firearms of that era. Surely you know the courts and the legislature would never permit that.

3. There is a lot contained in paragraph three. First, it is immaterial how many cartridges were found at the scene. A person could make small purchases over a period of several years in order to build up a large supply.

Who knew about bump stocks? Well, several million Americans did. They are gun hobbyists, gunsmiths, police officers, gun show attendees, and just about anyone who has seen them demonstrated on youtube videos. Obama's Bureau of ATF also knew about them, and ruled that attaching them to rifles to make them fire at a rate approaching the rate of full automatic rifles, was LEGAL.

No, fully automatic weapons are not outlawed. They never have been. They are, however, very heavily regulated. Background checks on people who apply to purchase a Class III (automatic) firearm are extensive; storage rules for keeping them are stringent; the cost of the weapons is quite high; and there is a $200 tax stamp that must be purchased from the government before the sale is final.

4. There has been a call for an outright ban of bump stocks. This seems extreme since fully automatic weapons are not banned, and they only mimic those weapons. The NRA has called for bump stocks to be "regulated as a Class III item, just as fully automatic weapons are regulated."

How would you limit the amount of ammunition that an individual owns? You might limit the amount of ammunition that can be made in an over the counter purchase, but purchases can be made and ammo accumulated over several years.

5. Your point 5 is a bit vague. I'm not sure whether or not you blame the shooting on Colorado being an open carry state. If so, I don't see the relevance.

6. This point is nonsense. Trump did not "rescind Obama gun checks for the mentally ill." Obama's Social Security Administration unilaterally, without Congressional approval, declared that retired people receiving Social Security benefits, who had designated a surrogate to deal with Social Security regarding their financial issues, were ineligible to own firearms.

Congress passed a bill, and President Trump signed it into law, forbidding Social Security from their illegal violation of the Second Amendment.

7. I take your remark in #7 as a challenge to the saying that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun, which is true.

Actually, it is quite commonplace that when an active shooter is confronted by the police, or other armed obstacle to his shooting, he usually takes his own life. That happened in this case. But, interestingly, it wasn't even a "good guy with a gun," it was just a "good guy."

The police in Las Vegas report that when an unarmed security guard approached the suite where the bad guy was located, the bad guy fired through the door, striking the security guard in the leg, and there was no further gunfire from the suite........ever. It is conjectured that the bad guy took his own life at that point.

I don't know about your Colorado Springs shootings, but if they were stopped by having the bad guy shot, the odds are that it was done by a good guy, either a civilian or a cop.

Now. Again. What law would you propose that would have prevented the shooting in Las Vegas?

Carl in Tampa

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