School shooting: but don't mention guns!

[Multivac]

True, and very successfully for a very long time. Doubtless there were similar things the subjects of the British Empire defined themselves by.

Absolutely! Cricket and tea.

Both of these are non-lethal.

 

[Dcdrac]

I have family in the USA and do nto want them put at risk becasue of a desire to own unecesarrily powerful weapons on a mass scale.

 

[LTC8K6]

We have this law in the UK. Here is the guidance from the home office regarding gun storage:


http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/publications/police/firearms/security_leaflet.pdf?view=Binary

Of course that doesn't stop people having secure storage and just leaving their firearms lying around the place - that's where the education element would come in.

Most of that is common sense in general.

The problem is that it sorta' conflicts with having a gun for self defense in the home, and would not go over too well in the US.

If, for example, I accept that I need to have my pistol under tight security, and have the ammunition securely stored also, it undermines my excuse for having the pistol in the first place.

It's not much use for a self defense situation if it takes me five minutes to get it ready to fire, imo. If someone is breaking in, or is already in my house, the pistol might as well not be there if it's locked away behind at least 2 levels of security.

There are ways to secure a pistol and still have it available reasonably quickly. They don't appear to meet those UK guidelines, though.

I had a friend who had his gun collection in a gun safe. He came back one day to find it open and his collection gone. After some research, we learned that the instructions to open almost every make and model of gun safe were available on the internet...

 

[a_unique_person]

It strikes me as odd that someone can only feel secure if they have access to a minature arsenel, the fears that drive that desire msut be incredibly intense.

In this case, it was the mother's own arsenal, bought to fight what she believed was an imminent urban war, that was used to kill here.

 

[a_unique_person]

(bolding mine)

There is no way to enforce this as a law.

.

The best defence against crime is a low crime rate. Guns seem to cause just as much trouble as they solve.

 

[LTC8K6]

I don't own my guns to feel secure. I don't keep them ready to defend my home. I don't feel any need to use one for self defense, and as I said earlier, I doubt I would use one for self defense.

I don't hunt at all.

I don't carry them with me except to go to a shooting range, which for me is almost always in another state on a friend's property. Occasionally I have done some shooting at my nephew's house, which is in the same state, but is a long drive.

I don't have any feeling of needing guns for protection at all, despite the fact that a mugger tried to rob me one night a few years ago.

Now, if I lived in Chicago, or Philly, or Durham, etc., I might have a different attitude. I doubt it even then, though.

I've been shooting guns and airguns as a sport/hobby since about 1978. So I have seen several levels of restriction on guns come in, and I can see the writing on the wall.

 

[Multivac]

Having seen them up close, I believe that the westboro bunch has a specific MO, one that I believe they utilize for the sole purpose of inciting violent reaction against them, in order to file civil suits against the perps, the LEA in the jurisdiction that fails to protect them etc.

I don't wish them any ill will.

I just wish they'd all die in a fire.

That seems fair and reasonable to me.

 

[LTC8K6]

Here's an interesting take from Powerline.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/12/the-times-embarrasses-itself-on-guns-again.php

They also mention the murder rate disparity between blacks and whites in the US, which doesn't seem to be talked about much in the context of gun control.

 

[Nessie]

Absolutely! Cricket and tea.

Both of these are non-lethal.

The USA's biggest mistake was becoming the USA. In leaving the Empire they went on a completely different course from other similar countries, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They remained within the Empire, gaining Dominion status and independence and most importantly the British way of life. So they have tea, cricket, no gun issues and a fully function health care system.

The USA tried to do it on their own and have failed, which may seem a bit exaggerated but when one American suggests armed guards for primary schools and another American with a gun as his avatar agrees it is a good idea, that is a fail of epic proportions. The reason for that is because, it is a good idea!!! How bad is that!!!!!

Fact is the USA has a different culture and you are stuck with it. Get used to it. There is nothing you can do about it.

 

[joesixpack]

Well said. As a Brit I simply cannot understand the attitude towards guns that is held by many Americans.

The objective measure of an attitude's merit is whether it can be understood by a brit. Glad we cleared that up.

 

[Ambrosia]

and there was a school shooting in Australia in 2002 (I don't know if this is before or after the ban) at Monash Univ. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting

This shooting was stopped in it's tracks when unarmed students tackled him when he tried to switch weapons.

This is what I am getting at when I say that reduced capacity magazines, or only having a limited number of weapons available renders the shooter vulnerable for the short period of time while the shooter reloads.

I get called ignorant of firearms and laughed at by gun proponents for suggesting that in some cases this downtime will allow potential victims the window of time they need to fight back.

In this Australian shooting the shooter was confronting adults, was at close proximity to them and was a poor shot, one of the wounded grabbed his arm while he went for another gun and two other adults tackled him.

Having reduced capacity magazines and limiting the number of guns available to spree killers will reduce the number of casualties on average.

Obviously not in every case.

Are there any good reasons NOT to reduce magazine capacity available to joe public?

 

[LTC8K6]

This shooting was stopped in it's tracks when unarmed students tackled him when he tried to switch weapons.

This is what I am getting at when I say that reduced capacity magazines, or only having a limited number of weapons available renders the shooter vulnerable for the short period of time while the shooter reloads.

I get called ignorant of firearms and laughed at by gun proponents for suggesting that in some cases this downtime will allow potential victims the window of time they need to fight back.

In this Australian shooting the shooter was confronting adults, was at close proximity to them and was a poor shot, one of the wounded grabbed his arm while he went for another gun and two other adults tackled him.

Having reduced capacity magazines and limiting the number of guns available to spree killers will reduce the number of casualties on average.

Obviously not in every case.

Are there any good reasons NOT to reduce magazine capacity available to joe public?

You tape 3 magazines together with spacers for clearance. Two up, and one down. This facilitates even more rapid magazine changes than normal.

A 10 round magazine limit is fine by me. It will slow me down not a whit.

It won't do a thing about a nut shooting up a school.

I can live with a mag cap limit.

 

[joesixpack]

The USA's biggest mistake was becoming the USA. In leaving the Empire they went on a completely different course from other similar countries, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. They remained within the Empire, gaining Dominion status and independence and most importantly the British way of life. So they have tea, cricket, no gun issues and a fully function health care system.
...
Fact is the USA has a different culture and you are stuck with it. Get used to it. There is nothing you can do about it.

You forgot to mention South Africa, Pakistan, and Ceylon. Are they enjoying the "British Way of Life^TM"? I notice the English here have a pretty wide streak of ethnocentricism. It's a very selective list of former dominions that you like to point to as successes. You all seem just far enough removed from your absolutely brutal colonial past to look at it through rose colo(u)red glasses. That lovely "British Way of Life^TM" came at great expense to those on who's backs it was built upon.

 

[Ambrosia]

If they limit magazine size, they can just carry 4, 10 shot mags instead of 2, 20 shot mags... Changing a magazine is literally as easy as they show it in the movies. it's a 5 second move,tops.

I think that having to reload more often will render the shooter more vulnerable to counter attack by the potential victims, at least some percentage of the time so would be a good thing.

IMO, they should just mandate private sales involve a background check, and stiffen penalties for illegal possession of a firearm.

Seems like a good start.

I'd reduce magazine capacity, and mandate some kind of "basic firearm training" that an individual needed to get as well before allowing them a weapon. how to fire, maintain, store a weapon safely, that kind of thing that takes an average person a couple of hours tops to learn.

Measures like that might actually stand a chance of passing in the US.

(I'd go further and restrict handgun types, and make it harder to get weapons, and mandate storage requirements like they have here or in NZ as well, but those would run afoul of the Constitution and SCOTUS rulings so are non starters. Not that I have any say in what Americans choose to have as gun control laws.)

 

[zeggman]

I have family in the USA and do nto want them put at risk becasue of a desire to own unecesarrily powerful weapons on a mass scale.

You mean SUVs?

There'd be a lot less roadkill if we all rode bicycles.

 

[LTC8K6]

I have family in the USA and do nto want them put at risk becasue of a desire to own unecesarrily powerful weapons on a mass scale.

An "assault weapon" fires at exactly the same rate as a revolver.

 

[Ambrosia]

An ineffective law such as an ammunition magazine capacity limit will likely tend to polarize the 'pro' and 'anti' camps even further. Law abiding firearm owners will of course grudging comply but will become even less trusting of the government. They will see such a law as the 'smoke-a-mirrors' political tactic that it really is, knowing that people with criminal intent are simply going to ignore it.

Well whatever gun control laws do get passed they are going to be a compromise between pro gun advocates and anti gun advocates.

Arming everyone, and banning all guns are equally stupid extremes. In response to this and other recent shootings either some new gun control laws will get passed, or the status quo will be maintained.

What laws can be passed that will stop "people with criminal intent" ? - they intend to ignore the law from the get go.

The elephant in the room is criminal behavior

As noted criminal behaviour is tough to legislate against. Gun control laws aim to reduce the amount of firepower available to some of the criminals.

How might you alter the statute books to help prevent these kinds of shootings?

The US has a unique gun culture. Guns are celebrated in the US. At the end of the day I agree that in principle a gun is a tool, and perhaps it's right to celebrate guns.

At the same time a state ought to protect it's citizens as much as is practical from spree killers and their like. Calling them "the price of freedom" ignores the fact that other countries with many guns seem to have less of these types of killings.

How do you go about balancing both having guns available to people, and protecting people from gun wielding nuts?

Instead of having that discussion, threads about gun control seem to devolve into pro gun advocates and anti gun advocates talking past each other, repeating the same talking points.

 

[Ranb]

Are there any good reasons NOT to reduce magazine capacity available to joe public?

A magazine ban just makes another victimless crime. With the millions of >10 round magazines already in civilian hands, banning them does not make them go away. It is also easy to make a higher capacity magazine with a hacksaw and tape. I made a higher capacity magazine for a Savage 10 fcm by removing the bottom plate and taping on an M-14 magazine that had the top cut off. Multiple springs can also be taped together.

When I verified the contraption worked, I welded the components together. The ban will only be a minor inconvenience to criminals and there is no rational reason to believe it will lower the death rate in the country.

Ranb

 

[Kestrel]

An "assault weapon" fires at exactly the same rate as a revolver.

Revolvers either require a separate cocking action or have much higher trigger pulls than a semi automatic. The semi automatic is probably a bit faster, especially after firing the sixth round where the revolver has to be reloaded.

 

[zooterkin]

Most of that is common sense in general.

The problem is that it sorta' conflicts with having a gun for self defense in the home, and would not go over too well in the US.

If, for example, I accept that I need to have my pistol under tight security, and have the ammunition securely stored also, it undermines my excuse for having the pistol in the first place.

It's not much use for a self defense situation if it takes me five minutes to get it ready to fire, imo. If someone is breaking in, or is already in my house, the pistol might as well not be there if it's locked away behind at least 2 levels of security.

There are ways to secure a pistol and still have it available reasonably quickly. They don't appear to meet those UK guidelines, though.

Well, that's probably because self defence is not generally a valid reason for having a firearm in the UK. I don't think the 2nd Amendment says much about that, either. As long as you can get your weapon and ammunition together in time for your militia meeting, there should be no problem.