A "common sense" proposal that will piss off both sides

[VikingsGuy]

True. But the mass shootings that make national news typically involve high capacity magazines.
The 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting killed 20 children between six and seven years old, and 6 adult staff members.
The shooting involved 156 shots fired.

The 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting killed 61 and injured 867 with over 1,000 shots fired.

Most recently, the school shooting in Texas killed 21 with the shooter having seven 30-round magazines.

From a political perspective, limiting high capacity magazines may be likely target sooner or later.
There was a 10-year ban on "assault weapons" from 1994-2004.
From one perspective, one might argue that the ban did not solve the problem.
From a different perspective, one might argue that most mass shootings have involved high capacity magazines.

I hear you, but I still see mass shootings, ARs and mag size as red herrings that drive TV ratings and political donations by both sides. I don't see any greater tragedy in a kid shot in school with an AR than a kid shot in the street on the way to school with a revolver. The real body count is with handguns for both murder and suicide and shotguns for suicide. I would prefer to focus on tens of thousands of deaths vs under a hundred.

 

[406dn]

The killings that shock and dismay the entire country are the large mass shootings. So, I think that is the best place to start. The common denominator in nearly every one of these events is a AR platform weapon. Most often there is also large magazine(s) used. Most of the time, the weapon was purchased legally.

We will never fundamentally change the human condition. There will always be a percentage of people who struggle with mental illness.

What we can or could do is make the tools available for the killing of other humans less efficient. Large capacity magazines combined with a semi automatic centerfire rifle is about the most efficient weapon one could design for the quick killing of large numbers of people. We see the proof of that on a regular basis.

 

[VikingsGuy]

-Create a sin tax on violent media to fund mental health intervention and treatment.

Great point, I missed that one on my list of tax targets - friendly amendment noted.

 

[MTGomer]

I think the best thing we could do is repeal and defund enforcement of restrictive firearms laws (permits to own/carry, how they must be kept in a vehicle, etc), and street-level drug use.
These two have combined to create the systemic racism that the left loves to whine about, while they create more of it and pretend to care about it. And that the right is fine ignoring because those people don’t vote for them and billybob would get mad if he heard them say it.

Around 80% of gun crime is committed with handguns by young African-American males in the inner-city, against other young African-American males in the inner-city. This is gang violence mostly spurred by drug crime. Sure, it’s easy to blame them for being thugs and blame ghetto culture and rap music, but perhaps we should look at the laws that have turned so many young black men into criminals.

Whites use drugs at the same rate, but blacks are incarcerated at much higher rates. Black communities also face the racism of the implementation of American gun laws, they face a double whammy because first many of them are arrested for breaking gun laws, and then many more are unable to protect themselves due to the complexity of their local gun laws.

Incarceration leads to poverty, poverty leads to crime, crime leads to incarceration, incarceration leads to poverty.

I realize that these conversations usually aren’t about how to reduce the 80% of gun crime. That gun crime is generally not the problem of people that are on this forum, including myself. Let’s face it, most of us, and especially the Everytown for gun safety Karens in Connecticut, don’t care about 17 year old gang bangers killing each other.
These conversations are mainly about how to reduce the headline grabbing mass shootings that can happen to the children of anybody with any income level.

Before we can implement a laundry list of new government actions, perhaps we can reverse some of the ones that got us here to begin with.

 

[Addicting]

4. Ban the media from mentioning the creeps names. No perceived glory for them.

1,000,000,000%

 

[MTGomer]

We will never fundamentally change the human condition. There will always be a percentage of people who struggle with mental illness.

I was thinking about this yesterday. You can’t, but say you could, snap your fingers and make every gun on the planet disappear just like that.
You are still left with an 18-year-old with a desire and willingness to try, to kill fourth graders in their classroom. What creates that desire? How do we deal with that? How do we intervene before someone carries out that desire? Even without guns, this seems to be a uniquely American problem. Fourth graders are fairly defenseless and there are a lot of ways that do not involve guns to kill a lot of them . What is going on in our country to make people want to and then try to do this? What’s going on on an individual level that thought would even cross someone’s mind?

I don’t even like cats, and I shot one the other day that had been hit by a car and had its back, pelvis, and both front legs broken. I hated doing that. I can’t imagine the thought process of someone that wants to kill children. We need to figure out how people get to that point mentally.

 

[Gulf of America]

Thanks for starting this thread VG. I've been pondering this the last few days, and was hoping to see your take. Hopefully this thread can avoid being derailed, even though constructive talk here is ultimately fruitless with a government that has proven unable to enact anything at all. I like your list a lot; a little concerned with red flag laws and lack of due process, but overall pretty solid. Here are a few of my thoughts:

• Remove suppressors from NFA - they aren't an effective tool for a mass shooter anyways. An argument could be made for SBR's being easier to conceal, but I'd be ok with removing them as well.
• Add any semiautomatic rifle with an external magazine to the NFA and any pistol with a capacity over 10rds.
• Provide funding to hasten NFA approval of said weapons to 30 days

The Chicago trope isn't useful here. I can raise children in a safe place and keep them out of gangs and in large part avoid the violence associated with that. I can't however protect them from a lunatic shooting up a school unless I keep them in the house at all times.

 

[SAJ-99]

That is bordering on a snarky trope. Better to offer thoughts on what we could do about Chicago gun violence or some thoughts about how gun controls in one city are pointless in a sea of lesser controls.

LOL. Here is some snark. All pushback seems to fall into one or all of these categories
1) the government will mess it up because it is so bad at everything. We should get rid of the government.
2) I’m a law abiding citizen so I shouldn’t be asked to do anything. Being lazy is my right.
3) it’s all mental health. We should fix that first…but I’m not paying for that.
4) it might save a few people but won’t fix the problem. People will just use sticks to commit crimes.

VG I think you put out a lot of good ideas and I could agree on almost all. But it will be the same, rinse and repeat arguments on why people want what is best for them and someone else should bear the burden. And unfortunately we will do this again after the next incident. Sorry for the snark, but I’m disappointed in Americans as a group in there unwillingness to talk about and address these problems.

 

[Gulf of America]

I was thinking about this yesterday. You can’t, but say you could, snap your fingers and make every gun on the planet disappear just like that.
You are still left with an 18-year-old with a desire and willingness to try, to kill fourth graders in their classroom. What creates that desire? How do we deal with that? How do we intervene before someone carries out that desire? Even without guns, this seems to be a uniquely American problem. Fourth graders are fairly defenseless and there are a lot of ways that do not involve guns to kill a lot of them . What is going on in our country to make people want to and then try to do this? What’s going on on an individual level that thought would even cross someone’s mind?

I don’t even like cats, and I shot one the other day that had been hit by a car and had its back, back pelvis, and both front legs broken. I hated doing that. I can’t imagine the thought process of someone that wants to kill children. We need to figure out how people get to that point mentally.

I agree that societal issues are at play, but the shooter was in the school for 40 minutes while police waited to engage. The sick person with a knife or anything but a firearm would be engaged much more quickly without a rifle capable of long range accuracy.

 

[MTGomer]

I was thinking about this yesterday. You can’t, but say you could, snap your fingers and make every gun on the planet disappear just like that.
You are still left with an 18-year-old with a desire and willingness to try, to kill fourth graders in their classroom. What creates that desire? How do we deal with that? How do we intervene before someone carries out that desire? Even without guns, this seems to be a uniquely American problem. Fourth graders are fairly defenseless and there are a lot of ways that do not involve guns to kill a lot of them . What is going on in our country to make people want to and then try to do this? What’s going on on an individual level that thought would even cross someone’s mind?

I don’t even like cats, and I shot one the other day that had been hit by a car and had its back, back pelvis, and both front legs broken. I hated doing that. I can’t imagine the thought process of someone that wants to kill children. We need to figure out how people get to that point mentally.

These aren’t fourth graders but this recently happened in the town adjacent to mine.

Even without guns in the picture, what is going wrong where a teenager ends up smuggling humans for the cartel and then murdering young girls because he hasn’t been paid for doing it?

Man who gunned down Casa Grande teens was owed money, police say

www.azfamily.com

 

[jryoung]

I don’t think anyone has all the answers to our nationwide mental health crisis, but it’s damn sure we are overdue in trying to figure some of it out. This is much bigger than just the few dozen killed by active shooters - or even the few thousand who choose firearms for suicide. This is about literally tens of millions suffering from on-going mental health challenges - a very small percentage of whom will pick up a weapon and use it to horrible effect.

I think the best thing we could do is repeal and defund enforcement of restrictive firearms laws (permits to own/carry, how they must be kept in a vehicle, etc), and street-level drug use.
These two have combined to create the systemic racism that the left loves to whine about, while they create more of it and pretend to care about it. And that the right is fine ignoring because those people don’t vote for them and billybob would get mad if he heard them say it.

Around 80% of gun crime is committed with handguns by young African-American males in the inner-city, against other young African-American males in the inner-city. This is gang violence mostly spurred by drug crime. Sure, it’s easy to blame them for being thugs and blame ghetto culture and rap music, but perhaps we should look at the laws that have turned so many young black men into criminals.

Whites use drugs at the same rate, but blacks are incarcerated at much higher rates. Black communities also face the racism of the implementation of American gun laws, they face a double whammy because first many of them are arrested for breaking gun laws, and then many more are unable to protect themselves due to the complexity of their local gun laws.

Incarceration leads to poverty, poverty leads to crime, crime leads to incarceration, incarceration leads to poverty.

I realize that these conversations usually aren’t about how to reduce the 80% of gun crime. That gun crime is generally not the problem of people that are on this forum, including myself. Let’s face it, most of us, and especially the Everytown for gun safety Karens in Connecticut, don’t care about 17 year old gang bangers killing each other.
These conversations are mainly about how to reduce the headline grabbing mass shootings that can happen to the children of anybody with any income level.

Before we can implement a laundry list of new government actions, perhaps we can reverse some of the ones that got us here to begin with.

Oakland and surrounding communities saw a drastic drop in gun homicides because of the implementation of various community programs. These programs work, investing in marginalized communities is a huge component.

The Buffalo shooting highlighted a component of the challenges in these communities.....they're "food deserts". Simple things such as better access to food, community outreach, counseling and cease fire programs should be easily agreeable amongst all sides. Yet, earlier this year Oakland Unified announced a closure or consolidation of 11 schools. It's not a hard guess as to what will likely happen in the coming years with those actions.

 

[406dn]

I was thinking about this yesterday. You can’t, but say you could, snap your fingers and make every gun on the planet disappear just like that.
You are still left with an 18-year-old with a desire and willingness to try, to kill fourth graders in their classroom. What creates that desire? How do we deal with that? How do we intervene before someone carries out that desire? Even without guns, this seems to be a uniquely American problem. Fourth graders are fairly defenseless and there are a lot of ways that do not involve guns to kill a lot of them . What is going on in our country to make people want to and then try to do this? What’s going on on an individual level that thought would even cross someone’s mind?

I don’t even like cats, and I shot one the other day that had been hit by a car and had its back, back pelvis, and both front legs broken. I hated doing that. I can’t imagine the thought process of someone that wants to kill children. We need to figure out how people get to that point mentally.

It would be nice if a finger snap could fix anything.

There are some that postulate that part of our gun violence is cultural. We value individual rights to a larger degree than most countries. We are also a melting pot of every ethnic background. There is less of a common sense of we are all interconnected.

You, I and nearly everyone else could never fathom the mindset needed to to kill innocent children in a classroom. But it only takes one in a million to have that mindset and then act on it.

That is what brings me back to limiting the efficiency they have available when they kill.

 

[crock239]

4. Ban the media from mentioning the creeps names. No perceived glory for them.

This is the one that really, really gets me. My view is that guns are the tools, and I'd be ok with most or all of VG original post...to me it's not a burden. Take away the tools, and the scale of the violence in a mass casualty event likely drops (as in Europe, etc). Other gun related violence (run o the mill homicide, suicide, etc.) different discussion.

But I think you have to take away the MOTIVATION from the perpetrators of these events. They likely want to make an impact, a splash as they go out.

Most of these are suicide missions so consequences aren't going to have an affect, one has to remove motivation.

In televised sporting events, there's this unwritten rule in the media you don't show the guy the runs out onto the field, because it would provide incentive for others to do it too...yet, when someone perpetrates a mass shooting we usually know his name, background, his manifesto and social media content immediately, as it's covered in gory detail by the media bc the public wants to read all about it. Like it's a horror movie or something.

I do wish there was a restriction on publishing information about the perpetrator. Hey, if we want to "infringe" on the Second Amendment in the interest of public safety, why not the First?

Personally, I adamantly refuse to click any link or article that appears to make mention of the perpetrator.

#dontclickthelink

Apologies for the sidetrack, this is a major point of frustration for me...

 

[406dn]

It is likely impossible to know what motivate these killers.

I don't think that are looking for fame or infamy. I think they are exceedingly angry at the world and their place in it. Angry enough to kill as many other people as possible before they either kill themselves or are killed by law enforcement.

 

[Randi]

If you look at deaths, death by handguns related to the problems associated with inner-city (and rural) poverty outpace deaths by AR by several orders of magnitude. The same can be said about successful suicides with firearms (handguns and shotguns in particular). Investing in mental health services, drug rehab services and economic development will save many more lives than an AR ban. Other than the obvious fundraising angle ARs provide to both sides, they just are really relevant to 95+% of the fatalities.

I agree


. 2020 had 45220 gun deaths. 54% suicide, 43% murder, 3% accidents or 13.6 fatalities by a firearm per 100,000. Some have already started saying it is the highest of all time. Yes and no. It is, but not percentage of population wise, as the population has increased since 1974, therefore 1974 is still the highest year ever percentage wise at 16.3 per 100,000.

Also, only ( and one is to many, but ) 513 of the 45220, were "mass muuders" ( 4 or more per incident )

In 2020 the highest age group suffering with mental health issues were 18-29, which, age group, I fall into. Having personal experience with several who became depressed and/or anxious during the covid lock down, it was far more prevalent in those without a family to support, guide, teach them, how to navigate through tough times.

IMHO---All firearm deaths are sad, be it murder or suicide, and the mass murder of the children in Texas is heartbreaking , at the very least, but in my humble opinion "Guns" are not the problem that we need to be addressing.

Legal gun purchases are at an all time high and leading the way in those purchases are women. Among that group, "Women", women of color are outpacing white women in purchasing handguns.

Better mental health programs, stricter laws for those arrested with an illegal firearm ( regardless of the crime they committed ) . Right now, the defunding of the police, bail leniency, probation instead of jail, low jail sentences are contributing to higher crime, not gun ownership

Respectively submitted

 

[BucksnDucks]

Start here-

• Fed funds provided to states/local govt for law enforcement, prisons, and emergency medical services will be subject to active enforcement, prosecution and sentencing of existing firearms laws

I do not support any new law when the current laws are so poorly enforced.

 

[cwitherow]

What I appreciate most about this thread and this forum is while we may not agree on WHAT to do, we agree that SOMETHING should be done and the conversation is civil. Every time this happens, my students talk about their plan if it happened here. I wish we didn't have to have that discussion so often.

 

[BlazerBeam]

I know you put a lot of work into this. Here are my concerns:
1. The overwhelming majority of countries that permit personal gun ownership have onerous laws for the purchase, transfer, possession, and registration of firearms. I really enjoy the convenience of not having to navigate a mile of red tape every time I want to purchase, sell, or transfer of guns and ammunition. A comprehensive set of gun reforms seems good in theory, but my concern is we'd just end up like every other over-regulated country.
2. Reading actual proposals put forth by gun control advocates, there are a lot of changes being promoted that consist of 99% punishment of law-abiding gun owners, and 1% making a dent in gun violence. It's perpetually annoying, as a responsible gun owner, to be continuously facing attacks that impede my ability to own and use firearms. Personally, I don't even really like guns...but they are great hunting and personal defense tools. If/when the major voices in the gun control lobby refocus their attention to targeting gun violence that is not at the overwhelming expense of law-abiding gun owners, I'd be much more interested in trying to compromise on finding solutions.
3. Guns are tools. If we got rid of every gun in America tomorrow ALL the social rot remains. Socially disaffected persons will continue to turn to mass violence towards others, and they will use different tools. Drive trucks into crowds, poisons, explosives, whatever. Would there be less violence in our country? I doubt it. I anticipate we would see a dip in the lethality of violence, but perhaps less than we'd hope for.
4. More government is not always better. There are a plethora of, usually well-intentioned, federal and state laws, policies, practices, programs, etc. that fuel, perpetuate, feed, and magnify social ills, such as inequality, voting disenfranchisement, employment barriers, housing discrimination, wealth disparity, healthcare access, etc. Our tax dollars at work to perpetuate social rot. Just one example, look at the millions of our own citizens that we incarcerate, higher than any other nation in the world. Step 1 in reducing gun violence is gut our governments of all the counterproductive nonsense they do.
5. We are in dire need of mental health advocacy in our country. It's time to start calling out all the politicians on the right for blaming the "mentally ill" for all gun violence. These claims are intentionally false. A bogeyman that distracts from many of the core issues contributing to gun violence. We do need better mental health care in our country, for the sake of persons who need that treatment. If reduced gun violence is a added bonus of that, great.

Rant: There's a lot of have-not's in America. We make it really difficult for people to participate in our society in a pro-social manner. We structure our laws to destroy families, keep people poor, keep people from working good jobs, keep kids from being raised by their parents, keep people from living, working, learning in a safe and healthy places, and disenfranchise people at the ballot box. If we look towards a bigger government as the fix to these issues, we get exactly what we deserve - inefficient, corrupt, cancerous, money-pit.

perfectly said

 

[OntarioHunter]

As I've said before, mandatory capacity limits for guns is a bone that we could easily throw to satisfy some of the antis. And, truth be told, it just plain makes sense. No one has any logical need for a weapon that can rapid fire twenty rounds (or more!) without loading. There is only one purpose for those guns and that is designated military or law enforcement. I think the federal govt can EASILY get away with limiting capacities without treading on the horribly outdated 2nd Amendment. I think the alternative is watching the 2nd Amendment go away. If the Supreme Court won't do it, the people will by calling a Constitutional Convention. And boys, you DON'T want that Pandora's Box opened! But this shit just can't go on. We can help shape change or suffer the consequences. Change will come.

Federal licensing, testing, background checks for possession (not just purchases) is LONG overdue. Then the silly FFA restrictions for acquisition can be discarded. How sweet would it be to simply mail order your own guns again like we do up here? There's a GREAT bone to throw the antis (actually I think the correct label would be the "concerned-gun crowd").

And for those who espouse the old "give em an inch, they'll take a mile" BS: you're giving them a hundred miles with that kind of talk! Almost a stupid as "gun control won't stop violent crime." Well, of course it won't. We're still basically animals (with God-like power). But we can mitigate the damage. We have to try.

 

[Mkamman]

We are number 1 in the world for single parent households. 80% of people incarcerated come from a single parent household. I do t believe we can legislate our way out of this.
Change will have to come from within these marginalized communities.

I’ve been asked before to do some work with Young Life and other groups. I don’t feel like I can say I’m to busy anymore…