Just another school shooting, yawn.

[John Hill]

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/te ... ry-uvalde/

A score of deaths but such is the price of freedom.

[OFSO]

The corollary to that is that if we don't pay the price - children and teachers murdered - we don't have freedom? And the more children murdered, then the more free we are? A strange philosophy, in my humble opinion.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Another day, another armed abomination!

[EA01]

I saw a police office state that 'The suspect is deceased, at this point' ..... does he suspect that may change to change???

[EA01]

Due to this Countries controversial and oppressive gun restrictions, no one has died as a result of a mass-shooting from an automatic or semi-automatic weapon on Australian soil today, for the 9,523rd day in a row!!!!

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Neither main US party has run on a platform including explicitly repealing the 2nd Amendment.
The Canadian Liberals have not directly attempted to bring back a Gun Registry in their political platform since it was repealed. They have never stood to ban guns completely.
In simple terms, whatever the efficacy or moral arguments, it's an election loser in North America.

Certain other questions need addressing, by both sides of the argument, and the politicians, and the media.

Why have some US States never had a mass shooting?
Why so, when those States are the ones with the least restrictions on arms?
Why did mass shootings not happen in significant numbers before the 1980s?
Why are further regulations proposed after mass shootings, when those proposed regulations would not have prevented the mass shooting in question?

.and one that applies to many laws, not just firearms:
Why are more laws proposed after incidents that could have been prevented if the existing laws had been applied effectively?

[G-CPTN]

What motivates these deviants to initiate their massacres?

With guaranteed fatal outcome for themselves, why don't they just end their lives without involving those of innocent youngsters (and their teachers)?

[Dushan]

I saw a police office state that 'The suspect is deceased, at this point' ..... does he suspect that may change to change???

No, what he means is that at "at this point" the deceased person is the suspect. There may be other suspects and the deceased one may not be a suspect.

[boing]

Fox,

The questions you ask are old ones but it is important that you have restated them in a succinct manner. I am going to explain one small aspect of the problem from my personal experience.

I am the holder of a Federal Firearms License type 7 which enables me to buy and sell firearms as a dealer and manufacture firearms within certain limits. This license is necessary for the peripheral activities of my business, we do not buy or sell firearms but we do handle them. To purchase a firearm in the US from a dealer the dealer/purchaser must complete a Federal Form 4473. On this Form the purchaser confirms he meets certain conditions such as not having a criminal record. The potential purchase information is then submitted to a State approved authority that supposedly carries out a limited background check on the purchaser and approves/disapproves the sale.

The information that is supplied on the 4473 is entered by the purchaser and approved by the appropriate organisation so the whole safety of the transaction depends on the honesty of the purchaser and the data available to the approving authority. You can see the problem in the last sentence.

Clearly a dishonest purchaser can lie on the form but the problem should be caught by the approver. This does not happen.

a. Crimes that were once considered to be serious and that once would have prevented a firearms purchase are now routinely downgraded from felonies to minor offenses by District Attorneys so they never appear on the background check records. This is a particular trend in liberal communities such as Chicago and California and this certainly explains one of the factors why gun violence is high in those areas.

b. Mental conditions are often not made public records from the fear that the records may stay with the sufferer for life thus adversely effecting the persons future in employment etc. This is a Federal restriction so a person with a serious mental condition can lie on the 4473 and this will not be detected.

I should add that, in retrospect, many killers have made their intentions clear on social media or even to class-mates and co-workers but no action was ever taken.

.

[Dushan]

The Canadian Liberals have not directly attempted to bring back a Gun Registry in their political platform since it was repealed. They have never stood to ban guns completely.
In simple terms, whatever the efficacy or moral arguments, it's an election loser in North America.

As of May 18 the Liberals have introduced the back-door long gun registry by requiring that every transaction involving long guns be recorded by RCMP. By law, the original long gun registry records were supposed to be destroyed although there is doubt that it was done. With this new law there will be a record of all the guns which exchange hands which is a defacto a gun registry.

[llondel]

Certain other questions need addressing, by both sides of the argument, and the politicians, and the media.

Why have some US States never had a mass shooting?
Why so, when those States are the ones with the least restrictions on arms?

Texas currently has the least restrictions. The most recent murderer went in and bought guns on his 18th birthday, and a few days later went into the school and used them.

Why did mass shootings not happen in significant numbers before the 1980s?
Why are further regulations proposed after mass shootings, when those proposed regulations would not have prevented the mass shooting in question?

You'll never stop all of them, but simple background checks would have at least raised questions about some of them. The current philosophy seems to be that the way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have lots of good guys with guns, which seems like a recipe for chaos in real life, with more accidental casualties. Also, there are very few instances where a good guy with a gun had an effect. This recent one, the shooter had more powerful weapons than those on security duty, and was apparently also wearing body armour.

.and one that applies to many laws, not just firearms:
Why are more laws proposed after incidents that could have been prevented if the existing laws had been applied effectively?

Unfortunately in this sort of case, it turns out that the guns were bought legally, so the existing laws would not have prevented anything.

A report last night said that it's so easy to get guns in Texas now, that Mexicans are buying them and smuggling them south across the border.

[boing]

Llondel

A report last night said that it's so easy to get guns in Texas now, that Mexicans are buying them and smuggling them south across the border.

That makes a change from the US Government ineptly trading illegal guns to Mexico some of which returned to the US and were used in killings. I bet most of these guns will return to the US illegally.

See Operation "Fast and Furious"

I suspect the reason so many firearms are being sent to Mexico is because, under Biden, US/Mexico border policing has completely disappeared and criminal elements, drug smugglers and people smugglers have free transit across the border. The Texas gun purchase system was designed to work with American citizens not Mexican criminal enterprises. Gun dealers are theoretically able to refuse to sell a firearm to someone they think is suspicious but you can imagine the screams of "Racism" if a dealer refuses to sell to a Mexican looking purchaser.

It would be fun to see liberals contorting themselves to show that illegal immigrants have a right to buy their otherwise hated guns.

.

.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

USA

My understanding was that Idaho, South Dakota, Wyoming and Vermont have the least restrictions.

https://www.statefirearmlaws.org/sites/ ... port_0.pdf
See p4.

..and that none of these have had any mass shootings

https://www.statista.com/statistics/811 ... -by-state/

The Parkland shooter was referred to law enforcement at least 46 times prior to the shooting, including to the FBI. There are numerous other examples where shooters acquired their guns legally, both at the time and meeting more recent legislation. There are also examples where shooters acquired firearms legally where the system should not have allowed them to do so.

I do not recall a case where a citizen who used their firearm to stop a shooter accidentally hit anyone else. Perhaps you could give me an example or two.

According to the Mother Jones mass shootings database 1982-now, including the most recent shooting, 1033 fatalities total over 40 years. More people have been shot dead in Chicago alone in the last 18 months.

One of the reasons why no "good guy with a gun had an effect" is that mass shooters choose places which have gun bans. The Batman shooter picked the only cinema in his area with a gun ban (Colorado allows concealed carry). It wasn't the closest or the biggest. The knifeman at the Minnesota Mall in 2016 was shot dead by an off-duty cop before he fatally wounded anyone. The MSM have always ignored the fact that the cop was carrying his weapon illegally, as the Mall had a gun ban.


CANADA

Quebec has a long gun registry, which it has had to build from scratch again since Harper ordered the original completely deleted. At the last estimate I read, about 85% of gun owners in Quebec are in breach of the law since they have not reregistered their guns. I have not read of any police action in regard to this, or any prosecutions. The Ontario Supreme Court, in denying a request to review the ending of the Registry, found no evidence that the registry had made any difference to crime rates.

[Dushan]

CANADA

Quebec has a long gun registry, which it has had to build from scratch again since Harper ordered the original completely deleted. At the last estimate I read, about 85% of gun owners in Quebec are in breach of the law since they have not reregistered their guns. I have not read of any police action in regard to this, or any prosecutions. The Ontario Supreme Court, in denying a request to review the ending of the Registry, found no evidence that the registry had made any difference to crime rates.

Yes, funny that. May something to do with a fact that it is only the law abiding that have/had their guns registered and the criminals don't, but hey it makes for good headlines when the Liberals (provincial and federal) [spit, spit] tell us how banning guns is going to eliminate crime.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

The only result of that seems to be that nobody bothers reading the headlines any more. ;)

Less than 1% of Canadians watch the CBC news (although all taxpayers pay for it).

[G-CPTN]

What motivates these deviants to initiate their massacres?

With guaranteed fatal outcome for themselves, why don't they just end their lives without involving those of innocent youngsters (and their teachers)?

Reposting this as I really cannot understand why the perpetrators cannot see that their actions will certainly result in their death, as certainly as grasping a high tension electricity catenary cable over a railway or turning the gun on themselves.

It's not as if there is the slightest chance of escaping and surviving.

So why choose to murder children? What do they expect that St Peter will decide when they turn up at the pearly gates?

[PHXPhlyer]

If we could also get the murder-suicide participants to reverse the order that would go a long way towards solving that problem as well.

PP

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Yes, Boing, you are quite right.
Insisting on legislatives procedures that clearly don't work is not just ineffective, but leads to contempt for the legislative process in general.
As we see in Quebec, for example.
I live in a more pleasant bit of the world. Our problem, according to the CBC, is illegal ATV and motorcycle riders. They have no helmets. They ignore all the road laws, are unlicenced, etc. They are mostly just teenage kids.
Two of them on a monkey bike went past me yesterday. A lad and his girlfriend I didn't know. They both gave me a little wave, and got one back, just like everybody does. About 20 minutes later, another vehicle went down the road. Obviously collisions are a massive problem ;) They've never caused an accident involving anyone else. Absolutely nobody would report them, and that leaves the Government, and the police, stuffed. The Government recently bought the police forces shiny, new expensive ATVs to follow and chase them, but the police don't have the time, so they go out on nice afternoons a couple of times a year and never catch anyone.

G-CPTN - no, you can't understand it, you're not nuts. It's often called suicide-by-cop. These people have already decided they are going to die. They go somewhere where there are defenseless people, and start shooting. Quite often they shoot themselves as soon as the police turn up. America does not have a gun problem, it has had a mental health problem since 1982.

[John Hill]

... it has had a mental health problem since 1982.

So what happened in 1982?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

An excellent question!
But that's when the mass shootings started as a thing.