Originally Posted by
King Of Dirk
It is not my intent to move goal posts or to distract from the discussion about gun policy in the United States. But since some have voiced concern that this thread is outliving its usefulness, I'd like to augment the discussion with a question. It is asked in good faith, with no agenda, and out of genuine curiosity about how Salonistas feel. If you can't/won't meet me halfway by answering/engaging in good faith, please don't expect the courtesy of a response.
I suspect we will all disagree about the proper allocation of blame between the availability of high-capacity semi-automatic firearms and the organisms who utilize them to slaughter innocents. I further suspect no staunch gun control advocate believes the immediate removal of all guns from all people would result in a year with zero homicides, and that no staunch gun rights advocate believes that, for example, the piece of shit in Las Vegas could have been as lethal with a shotgun designed for skeet shooting instead of a bumpstock-equipped semi-auto (gun owners: do you really believe he could have killed 58 people with an over/under 12 gauge?). [Short sidebar: is there no one willing to praise President Trump's Department of Justice for administratively banning bump stocks?]
That wasn't the question. This is: What is it about modern American society that has contributed to the escalation in both severity and frequency of these attacks?
I AM NOT going all "guns don't kill people, people kill people" on you, I swear. I'm simply noting a timeline: Charles Whitman, then...Columbine? I vaguely remember a McDonald's shooting sometime around (and maybe near) the LA Olympic Games, and there was the North Hollywood Bank shoot-out in 1997* (which is hard to categorize as a mass shooting; 2000 rounds were fired (~650 of those by police), and the only two dead were bank robbers...and I'm glad they aren't with us anymore, and the weapons the robbers used were illegally converted to fully-automatic, i.e. already banned).
So if we say Whitman in '69, McDonald's in CA (if I'm even remembering that correctly) around 1984, Columbine in 1999 - that's really exactly every 15 years. Now it seems these things happen every 15 weeks (or even days). I know there are more Ar-15s in private hands, and by a huge factor, but what has happened to make people (oh, let's just say it: MEN) want to use them?
Tangentially related question: if there were no high-capacity magazines in private hands, would these events be less frequent? I think honest people have to say they'd be less severe (every life matters, but I mean in terms of aggregate carnage). Some guy shot some guy in Richmond today, but you didn't hear about it. Are these nitwits going for high body counts to be newsworthy?
*I attribute the recent (and rapid) "militarization" of police departments to this event, or at least suggest the justification for it began with this event.
Edited to add: I know reforming and enforcing gun laws is part of the solution. What are the other parts? What else can be done (fuck that: what else can we do) to make this better?
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