Just another school shooting, yawn.

[Rwy in Sight]

I think Fox did point out that the law arranging the gun licencing need to be applied correctly, constantly and uniformly.

[Dushan]

He was a criminal long before he bought the guns because he bought them with intent to commit a crime.

So to my mind that means that tighter controls need to be in place. Here you can buy a air gun but to buy a real gun not only do you have to be a citizen but there is a restricted number of licences issued per year.And then you have to be vetted by the police.

Yes tighter controls and I think Boing already explained what is supposed to happen and what does happen, especially in case of mentally unstable. As for “limited number”, that’s a non starter. Does that mean that the 2nd applies to some, but not all?

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

He was a criminal long before he bought the guns because he bought them with intent to commit a crime.

So to my mind that means that tighter controls need to be in place. Here you can buy a air gun but to buy a real gun not only do you have to be a citizen but there is a restricted number of licences issued per year.And then you have to be vetted by the police.

Yes tighter controls and I think Boing already explained what is supposed to happen and what does happen, especially in case of mentally unstable. As for “limited number”, that’s a non starter. Does that mean that the 2nd applies to some, but not all?

Here we are talking about Effrica not the US of A where firearms traditionally are for shooting animals as opposed to self defense. (Mostly ) So a totally different culture and history. And yes the numbers are limited as not everyone is equal in tribal terms due to their culture and history

As an aside we have protected wildlife areas where you can't use a gun even for self defense against a charging elephant. They really are not into guns here in the same way as in America .

[boing]

These discussions always make me think of a small rural community in slightly post-colonial America. Of necessity every citizen was armed, except one, the village idiot. I am sure de facto gun control was exercised even in those times but it could be done by a common sense decision made by the community - everyone should have a gun except poor Jeb because he is out of his mind and everybody knew it. We don't have the luxury of such community common sense because we do not know each other well enough and the law that is supposed to protect can also work against us.

We certainly do not want the government keeping intrusive records of our life and investigating our personal actions so how do we go about keeping firearms out of the hands of the wrong people?

We could implement waiting periods as has been done in the past. The logic being that someone could not buy a gun on demand and use it in a period of high emotion, it gave people time to cool down and think rationally. Would this have helped in the present case? Probably not because the shooter was not surrounded by people who could have helped him, he was isolated and that was a major part of the problem. A short waiting period is not something I would object to but the counter argument is that a woman who has just left her violent husband needs self-protection immediately. The police have proved on several occasions that they cannot supply this.

We could raise the minimum age for gun ownership. I rather feel that the argument that we let 18 year olds use guns in the military so why not let people of the same age in civilian life use them is not very strong. Could we allow an older person such as parent buy a gun for use of a younger person if they become entirely responsible for the consequences? Presently buying a gun for someone else to use, ie it becomes under the other persons total control, is quite properly illegal. What would a good minimum age be, 21, 24 ? In case of insanity a few years older hardly seems to make much difference. Probably the only value might be that mental health problems might become more obvious with time and it gets youth past the irrational teen years.

Ban all guns. Well, you have something like 300 million legally owned guns out there now. How long would it take to collect them and how compliant would the population be? How many years will it take to untangle the ensuing legal challenges and problems? Certainly plenty of time for more deaths. Then, how are you going to collect the millions of illegally owned weapons? What technique will you use, house to house searches by para-military police dressed in their overly dramatic goon suits carrying the very weapons they are trying to eradicate? I would guess that if a decision was made to visit known gun owners, someone whose ownership you could legally prove, you might collect one fifth of the guns out there. The others would have been sold to someone whose name cannot be remembered of perhaps they were lost in a lake in a boating accident.

How about a reporting campaign whereby anybody owning or suspected of attempting to own a firearm when unfit could be reported to the police? Once again pluses and minuses. This would fundamentally be a case of someone calling in and reporting someone else they think is anti-social. Now, in an uncomfortable way I quite like this idea but I can see a difficult balance because it depends upon a potentially unbalanced member of the community reporting someone else that they think is potentially unbalanced. This could lead to anti-gun folks arranging mass campaigns of making false accusations against people simply to prevent gun sales. I do think that rational reporting of incidents such as people strutting around showing off their firearms in an exhibitionist manner is a warning sign, posting boastful photos of your firearms on social media could be a warning sign, certainly reporting any talk of planned violence heard face-to-face or on social media should be taken seriously. These events have been seen as precursors to violent acts in the past. Perhaps not reporting such information could be considered in retrospect as an offense similar to abetting a crime.

How about vastly increasing the legal penalties for possessing or using an illegal firearm? How about vastly increasing the penalties for misuse of a legal firearm? How about clarifying what is a legal and what is an illegal use of a weapon and leave it to a judge in questionable cases? How about implicating people who had warning of impending violent acts and should have spoken out? Yes, these ideas are only applied after the fact but telling people clearly what they may or may not legally do and then arranging severe and equitable punishment for breaking the rules may help to deter some actors and this change could be implemented next week with political support from both sides.

.

[llondel]

Before the UK banned most guns, but after the Hungerford shooting, I had a friend who owned some. He came home one morning after working night shift, to find that his street had been cordoned off and armed police present. Obviously he wanted to get home, and asked the police at the barrier what was going on. He discovered that there had been reports of someone being seen up on the rooftops (this was a terraced street in Bristol), and the police had checked their records and determined that there was a gun owner living on the street, so it was assumed he might have flipped and was up on the roof ready to shoot at passers-by. Except he wasn't, because he'd been at work (plenty of alibis there) and was standing in front of the police officer, and therefore could not be up on the roof. I believe he was escorted home, showed the police his locked gun cabinet with the guns all securely inside and they called off the whole exercise.

[boing]

Llondel,
Funny story but I can fully imagine the events.

I was a competition shooter in the airforce. I actually disliked pistol shooting but on the team we had several members who were OK with a rifle but not too good with a pistol. I was OK with a rifle and OK with a pistol so I was, reluctantly, put on the pistol team. I had my own pistol which I could not keep in my married quarter and I could not have it in my car or around the squadron even temporarily, I had to keep it in the armoury. End of work, let's go to the range and practice. Sorry armoury closed, NCO in charge gone home. Week-ends armoury not open. I might have been a better pistol shooter if I could have got my hands on my pistol to practice.

As a civilian I kept the pistol but had to make secure storage in my house. There really was no great place for any sort of safe so the eventually approved storage was in a heavy, locked, metal case, bolted down from the inside to two sturdy wooden beams ---- in my unfinished attic. To get to the pistol I had to take a step-ladder upstairs, set it up under the ceiling access to the attic, remove the access panel and pull myself up into the, usually freezing, attic and then I could unlock the box and remove my pistol. The only consolation was watching police officers go through the same procedure on their periodic inspections. Many of them were not built to go through that small access area.

.

[Pontius Navigator]

In about 1987/88 at Coningsby one of our engineering officers used to carry his own 0.45 Magnum in a holster on exercise. He even had live rounds on the belt. Other times it was kept, as Boing said, in the armoury. I think my own weapon at the time was an SMG but I was never issued live round 'off range'.

The only time I was ever issued live rounds was a magazine with 10 rounds in Cyprus. We were not permitted to load and the bullets were 'secured' with cello tape. The did the first round a power of no good.

[John Hill]

He was a criminal long before he bought the guns because he bought them with intent to commit a crime.

Therefore if the guns were not available he would not have become a criminal.

[OFSO]

There's a nice little video doing the rounds of a four year old boy at the NRA, demonstrating cocking a semi automatic rifle, swapping magazines, cold firing the weapon etc., and the TV presenter (I think she is) exclaims "adorable". Mental health issues indeed.

[Pontius Navigator]

He was a criminal long before he bought the guns because he bought them with intent to commit a crime.

Therefore if the guns were not available he would not have become a criminal.

An impossible assumption. Guns are always available. It is just a question of how easily they are available.

[John Hill]

Gun fondlers always have an a logical answer, except when they do not.

[Dushan]

He was a criminal long before he bought the guns because he bought them with intent to commit a crime.

Therefore if the guns were not available he would not have become a criminal.

He was a criminal because his intent was to kill. The tool he used is irrelevant.

[Dushan]

There's a nice little video doing the rounds of a four year old boy at the NRA, demonstrating cocking a semi automatic rifle, swapping magazines, cold firing the weapon etc., and the TV presenter (I think she is) exclaims "adorable". Mental health issues indeed.

Isn’t it better that he knows how than to read about accidental death of a four year old when he was playing with a gun.

I was about 7 or 8 when shown how to handle a handgun. My uncle’s Beretta. Unload, take apart, clean, put together. Once the mystery of the gun in my uncle’s night stand disappeared I was never tempted go and “play” with it. He took me to the range a few times and that was it.

Once a friend brought his father’s trophy Luger (this was only about 15 or 16 years after WW2) to school. Not wise, but hey - kids. The teacher took it, unloaded it, gave it back to him and said “don’t do this again or I’ll tell your father”. He never did. Nobody got hurt.

[boing]

One of my good airline friends told me about his impecunious upbringing in rural Tennessee. He walked a mile down a dirt road to the school bus stop - with a single barrel shotgun. He then boarded the bus with the shotgun, stored it in his classroom during the day, returned to the bus stop that afternoon and hunted for the pot on the way back to the house. Often the rabbit etc he picked up was the evening meal or there was no meat.

Having been through Vietnam he made good in civilian life and bought many expensive firearms but he always pined for that cheap single-shot shotgun that he took to school.

.

[John Hill]

He was a criminal long before he bought the guns because he bought them with intent to commit a crime.

Therefore if the guns were not available he would not have become a criminal.

He was a criminal because his intent was to kill. The tool he used is irrelevant.

See my preceding post.

[John Hill]

One of my good airline friends told me about his impecunious upbringing in rural Tennessee.

Hearsay and therefore not able to pass my BS filter.

[Rwy in Sight]

He was a criminal long before he bought the guns because he bought them with intent to commit a crime.

Therefore if the guns were not available he would not have become a criminal.

Obviously he could work a bit harder and get the weapon illegally.

[John Hill]

Yeabut how hard is it to get illegal guns in Texas?

[prospector]

Cannot be as hard as in Auckland New Zealand, never seen so many news articles of firearms being discharged, and some classified as high power rifles, in suburban streets as the last few weeks.

https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/national ... da75460b09


" This year's Budget set aside $208m over four years to establish a new Firearms Business Unit within police to oversee the register and other ongoing Arms Act legislative changes."

Not all bad, plenty of new work for the penpushers.

[John Hill]

Cannot be as hard as in Auckland New Zealand, never seen so many news articles of firearms being discharged, and some classified as high power rifles, in suburban streets as the last few weeks.

It's the gangs you know, exercising their sacred rights under their classification as charitable, non-profit, tax-free, cultural organizations.