Religious gun nut kills Batman moviegoers

[Wumbologist]

Though I probably wouldn't work in an area of town like yours, I understand if you've already had a few scrapes feeling safer with a gun. I can't imagine living or working in such an area then I guess. Oh, one time, in Buffalo, NY a guy pointed his finger(?) at me through his jacket asking me for money, early one morning while I was on my way to work, but I didn't have any and told him so, and he just left.

I wouldn't work there if I had much choice, either. But that's the thing, not everybody can avoid the bad parts of town. Some people don't have much of a choice in the matter, and have to work or live in areas with higher rates of violent crime.

I am glad that you understand why I might choose to own and carry guns, Mai. I've found that one of the biggest hurdles in discussing guns with people whose opinions differ from mine is the prevailing stereotype that exists of American gun owners, the brash, uneducated redneck who lives in a compound in the woods, hates the "gub'mint", and buys whatever groceries he can't kill or scrape off the road at Wal-Mart. I don't blame people for having this stereotype in their heads. I did too, until I became a gun owner myself and started to see the culture from the inside. The people who fill this stereotype are very vocal and hard not to notice but in my experience they are actually a minority. The gun club I was a member at was full of average, normal upstanding members of society, and you'd never guess by looking at them that they had an AR-15 and several thousand rounds of .223 at home in their safe. There are millions of good, upstanding citizens in the US who happen to own and shoot guns for a multitude of reasons, including hunting, sport, self-defense, or just plain fun. Once you realize that there are a whole lot of nice, friendly and rational people in this country who own guns, the nature of the debate changes.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm buy Ayaan a gun next week. She'll be fully trained before she ever fires it.

[Wumbologist]

I'm buy Ayaan a gun next week. She'll be fully trained before she ever fires it.

Set on anything in particular?

[maiforpeace]

Mai, I had to check the links to make sure that wasn't from the Onion.

The Borowitz Report rocks.

Though I probably wouldn't work in an area of town like yours, I understand if you've already had a few scrapes feeling safer with a gun. I can't imagine living or working in such an area then I guess. Oh, one time, in Buffalo, NY a guy pointed his finger(?) at me through his jacket asking me for money, early one morning while I was on my way to work, but I didn't have any and told him so, and he just left.

I wouldn't work there if I had much choice, either. But that's the thing, not everybody can avoid the bad parts of town. Some people don't have much of a choice in the matter, and have to work or live in areas with higher rates of violent crime.

I am glad that you understand why I might choose to own and carry guns, Mai. I've found that one of the biggest hurdles in discussing guns with people whose opinions differ from mine is the prevailing stereotype that exists of American gun owners, the brash, uneducated redneck who lives in a compound in the woods, hates the "gub'mint", and buys whatever groceries he can't kill or scrape off the road at Wal-Mart. I don't blame people for having this stereotype in their heads. I did too, until I became a gun owner myself and started to see the culture from the inside. The people who fill this stereotype are very vocal and hard not to notice but in my experience they are actually a minority. The gun club I was a member at was full of average, normal upstanding members of society, and you'd never guess by looking at them that they had an AR-15 and several thousand rounds of .223 at home in their safe. There are millions of good, upstanding citizens in the US who happen to own and shoot guns for a multitude of reasons, including hunting, sport, self-defense, or just plain fun. Once you realize that there are a whole lot of nice, friendly and rational people in this country who own guns, the nature of the debate changes.

That's very much the case with the more vocal types - they make it bad for the rest.

And I have shared that my husband owns a Glock, haven't I? I'm not entirely against guns, but I do believe we need to have much stricter controls on them than we do now. If the average gun owner is responsible, then stricter controls shouldn't be an issue, should they?

That's also one of the many reasons why I choose to live in California. In regards to the subject of this thread, fully automatic assault weapons like the one that was used in this massacre are banned in California.

[Twoflower]

I wasn't allowed to touch or shoot a gun until I had taken hunters safety.

[klr]

Mai, I had to check the links to make sure that wasn't from the Onion.

You and me both. To think that an organisation that promotes certain individual rights laid down in the Constitution would at the same time want to curb other inalienable rights ...

[maiforpeace]

I'm buy Ayaan a gun next week. She'll be fully trained before she ever fires it.

I'm guessing she wants the gun?

It's a bad idea if she's either not interested, or apprehensive - don't insist on it for her protection. You heard my story about the wall heater.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I'm buy Ayaan a gun next week. She'll be fully trained before she ever fires it.

Set on anything in particular?

She'll have "airplane" loads, the rounds won't make it out of the house. Other than that, it's going to be just one more skill she has.

[Wumbologist]

And I have shared that my husband owns a Glock, haven't I? I'm not entirely against guns, but I do believe we need to have much stricter controls on them than we do now. If the average gun owner is responsible, then stricter controls shouldn't be an issue, should they?

I think there are certain things that could change about the way guns are treated in our society. You and I would probably differ on the specifics, I personally believe that it's more a matter of changing the culture surrounding gun ownership in our society, and in a larger scope, changing a lot of things about our culture in general. I think that sort of effort would go a lot farther in reducing the incidence of violent crime in this country than simply placing restrictions on what one can or cannot own. I'm hoping that with the recent string of pro-gun rulings from the Supreme Court, the gun control lobby in this country will shift their focus more onto that sort of change than their current attempts to simply ban things that they consider scary and dangerous.

That's also one of the many reasons why I choose to live in California. In regards to the subject of this thread, fully automatic assault weapons like the one that was used in this massacre are banned in California.

I can almost guarantee that the rifle used in this incident was not a fully automatic weapon, but rather a semi-automatic. Full-auto guns are legal in many parts of the US, but due to the regulations surrounding them are very rare, very expensive, and exceedingly difficult to actually acquire. As a result, there have been (if I'm not mistaken) a grand total of two crimes committed with lawfully-owned full auto guns since 1986, one having been committed by a law enforcement officer.

In this particular case, I can't imagine what could have prevented this. Stricter firearms regulations wouldn't have stopped it, this was, as I understand it, a well-educated, clean cut young man with no criminal history. No reasonable restrictions on gun ownership would have stopped him from acquiring firearms. A total ban might but you and I know that ain't gonna fly in this country. Even if he had been somehow prevented from accessing guns, we are talking about a man with a Ph.D in the sciences. It took law enforcement a day and a half to disable the booby traps he had set in his home. What's to say that, without firearms, he wouldn't have used explosives or some sort of chemical weapon, and potentially killed many more people?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Media inflation tends to make Full Autos out of mole hills.

[maiforpeace]

That's also one of the many reasons why I choose to live in California. In regards to the subject of this thread, fully automatic assault weapons like the one that was used in this massacre are banned in California.

I can almost guarantee that the rifle used in this incident was not a fully automatic weapon, but rather a semi-automatic. Full-auto guns are legal in many parts of the US, but due to the regulations surrounding them are very rare, very expensive, and exceedingly difficult to actually acquire. As a result, there have been (if I'm not mistaken) a grand total of two crimes committed with lawfully-owned full auto guns since 1986, one having been committed by a law enforcement officer.

In this particular case, I can't imagine what could have prevented this. Stricter firearms regulations wouldn't have stopped it, this was, as I understand it, a well-educated, clean cut young man with no criminal history. No reasonable restrictions on gun ownership would have stopped him from acquiring firearms. A total ban might but you and I know that ain't gonna fly in this country. Even if he had been somehow prevented from accessing guns, we are talking about a man with a Ph.D in the sciences. It took law enforcement a day and a half to disable the booby traps he had set in his home. What's to say that, without firearms, he wouldn't have used explosives or some sort of chemical weapon, and potentially killed many more people?

I don't know the particulars of guns, I'm just going by this article:

California gun laws prohibit assault weapon used in Colorado theater shooting

Why does someone need an automatic rifle that can fire more than ten rounds at a time? You don't think banning that particular type of rifle wouldn't have prevented what happened in Colorado?

EDIT

I support the right to bear arms in reasonable situations - for hunting, sports, self defense...all the reasons you mentioned. But do you need an automatic weapon, even a semi automatic for that?

And sure, if someone really wants to commit a massacre like this, they can do it in other ways and figure out making a bomb, starting a forest fire, whatever. But why make it easier by making this type of unnecessary gun available?

[Wumbologist]

I don't know the particulars of guns, I'm just going by this article:

California gun laws prohibit assault weapon used in Colorado theater shooting

Why does someone need an automatic rifle that can fire more than ten rounds at a time? You don't think banning that particular type of rifle wouldn't have prevented what happened in Colorado?

There are entire websites dedicated to showing how to circumvent the California gun bans and legally obtain a rifle that is pretty much identical in functionality to the one used in the Colorado shooting. You could ban the AR-15 by name, but you would be banning what is currently the single most popular sport shooting platform in the US, with probably tens of millions of such guns in circulation. That wouldn't prevent people from simply using other guns that do the exact same thing, such as my Mini-14 that will perform identically to an AR, and was used to disastrous effect in the recent massacre in Norway. In order to "effectively" ban such capability, one would have to ban any gun capable of accepting a detachable magazine or being converted to do so, a ban that would cast an unimaginably wide net. Banning the magazines wouldn't work, there are far too many in circulation, it's nearly impossible to enforce, and with the advent of 3D printing technology, the technology for a person to manufacture such magazines in their own home is becoming more and more widely available. Speaking of 3D printing, I know for a fact that many of the parts of an AR-15 can be made in a 3D printer, including the lower receiver, which is the part that is legally considered to be the "firearm" portion of the gun. In short, it would place too strict a restriction on law-abiding gun owners and the weapons that they already own, while being entirely ineffective in preventing such weaponry from falling into the wrong hands.

[maiforpeace]

I don't know the particulars of guns, I'm just going by this article:

California gun laws prohibit assault weapon used in Colorado theater shooting

Why does someone need an automatic rifle that can fire more than ten rounds at a time? You don't think banning that particular type of rifle wouldn't have prevented what happened in Colorado?

There are entire websites dedicated to showing how to circumvent the California gun bans and legally obtain a rifle that is pretty much identical in functionality to the one used in the Colorado shooting. You could ban the AR-15 by name, but you would be banning what is currently the single most popular sport shooting platform in the US, with probably tens of millions of such guns in circulation. That wouldn't prevent people from simply using other guns that do the exact same thing, such as my Mini-14 that will perform identically to an AR, and was used to disastrous effect in the recent massacre in Norway. In order to "effectively" ban such capability, one would have to ban any gun capable of accepting a detachable magazine or being converted to do so, a ban that would cast an unimaginably wide net. Banning the magazines wouldn't work, there are far too many in circulation, it's nearly impossible to enforce, and with the advent of 3D printing technology, the technology for a person to manufacture such magazines in their own home is becoming more and more widely available. Speaking of 3D printing, I know for a fact that many of the parts of an AR-15 can be made in a 3D printer, including the lower receiver, which is the part that is legally considered to be the "firearm" portion of the gun. In short, it would place too strict a restriction on law-abiding gun owners and the weapons that they already own, while being entirely ineffective in preventing such weaponry from falling into the wrong hands.

So, if I understand you correctly, a gun like a Glock is essentially this type of gun?

Also, see my edit in my prior post - it responds to your comments about people making their own guns. It's still a lot harder to manufacture your own gun than it is to simply walk into a store and buy one.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

A Glock is usually a 9mm Semi-automatic, pull the trigger, get one round, repeat as needed.

[maiforpeace]

A Glock is usually a 9mm Semi-automatic, pull the trigger, get one round, repeat as needed.

With a magazine of 10 bullets, right?