Quote:
Originally Posted by MartinSE
You are conflating all murders with mass shootings. Yes, violence will happen, but I feel safe saying zero out of the 300 mass shootings this year have been committed by Bludgeons.
The weapon of choice is AR-15. PERIOD. That is not debatable.
That said, I will agree with you that melting down every AR-15 in the country/world would not stop mass shootings, they would simply switch to another weapon.
I disagree with your comment that people don't want to look at morals and social media et al. I have read numerous reports on those issues. And for the most part they show that those "symptoms" that you list are represent in almost every country in the world. And the other countries do not have 300 mass shootings this year. So, the implication is they are NOT the cause.
I personally think the cause is a feeling of hopelessness by most poor and middle class Americans. I don't think I recall a rich person EVER committing a mass shooting in this country. They are typically by people with mental health issues (one could argue that to shoot 6 strangers for not apparent reason is a form of mental illness), or people that want to strike back at others that have bullied them, or men that feel they lives out of control and a significant number are coming from an abusive relationship where they abused their wives who finally left them and got restraining orders - again, a form of feeling like their life is out of control.
So, my question is why is it that so many feel so hopeless in the richest country in the world?
My answer is predatory capitalism, BIG corporations (not small ones) that control our lives, our government and our economy and leave broken people in their wake. That is what I think it is root cause.
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Actually, it IS debatable. Just because the media calls the weapon of choice in mass murders an "AR-15" does not mean it really is one. Now, you may say I am getting picky when I say that the weapons were sometimes, much like an AR-15 but not one. They are semi-automatic. However, so is most of the pistols used in murders today. A semi-automatic pistol is capable of doing just as much damage in close quarters as a semi-automatic rifle, .....and many of today's pistols are capable of using a 30 round (bullets) magazine.
You say that in one particular incident, a "good guy with a gun" did not stop the bad guy with a gun from shooting a bunch of children. Duh! How many million potential victims WERE saved by good guys with guns? You can't say because no one seems to care. Did you ever consider that maybe soft targets are just that, easy targets where laws prohibit possession of a gun on the property? I do not suggest that teachers carry guns. I do suggest that any teacher with a CCW permit, should be able to carry. If you do not trust the teacher to carry a pocket gun while working, how do you trust a teacher to take care of your children for most of the day? I do not suggest that guns are the answer to mass shootings. I do suggest that taking guns away is not the answer. What would you rather have, a young person building a bomb and taking it to school? How about an explosive vest?
No, most mass shootings are not being committed using an AR-15. That is an incorrect statement. These weapons LOOK LIKE military weapons, but there are a lot of them that "look like." I have a 22cal rifle that "looks like" a military weapon and has a 50 round magazine. Am I a threat? I've owned firearms for 60 years and never/NEVER use one criminally. None of my guns have left my control and none of them have gone on a mass shooting binge.
Someone said there are over 300 million firearms owned by civilians in the U.S. It would be interesting to know how many have been used illegally.
We do not have a gun problem in the U.S. We have a people problem. We have a mentally deficient people problem. And there is no way to eliminate that problem. All we can do is protect against that problem and the only/ONLY way to do that is to make soft targets into HARD targets. Put a tall fence around public schools with an armed guard checking folks through a gate. Just that simple and inexpensive procedure will likely eliminate almost all mass shootings in schools. Security cameras can also supplement the children's protection.
If you feel that getting rid of guns will make the children safer then I guess you feel the same way about eliminating our military to make us less likely to be invaded by another country. After all, we can't go to war without weapons, right?