William Parcher
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It was probably "against the rules" to have it anywhere on campus including sitting in a car in the dorm parking lot.
School shooting Florida
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lobosrul5
Philosopher
Can you link a source for that? It was my understanding that cops, at least while on duty, can carry anywhere in the state that their department is certified in with only very narrow restrictions, ie prisons and certain federal installations.
William Parcher
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Most of the story is in another thread. http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=326633&page=5
The shooter is the cop's son. The son is at school in Michigan away from his parent's home in Illinois. His father is a cop in Illinois, not Michigan - but he brought his gun to Michigan when he came to pick up his son for Spring Break.
We don't know yet if the gun was his police pistol or a personal gun. Of course he was off-duty and in another state anyway. The school is a "gun free zone". I don't know if there would be special exemptions for this. Off-duty cop from a different state has a gun in his car which is parked at a dorm building lot.
lobosrul5
Philosopher
I see their policy is "on-duty" police only. So he was probably in violation by just having it in his car on campus. OK this makes more sense now. And obviously the part about him having a personal connection with the cop, rather than he broke into a random off duty cops personal car and stole their gun (seems unlikely).
LTC8K6
Penultimate Amazing
Note that this whole piece is based around the idea that Cruz used 10 round magazines:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/broward/article202486304.html
It is however, full of the statements we often see that make one think they have no idea what they are talking about...
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LTC8K6
Penultimate Amazing
He was acting loopy at school and his parents were called and he was sent to the hospital the night before.
The parents picked up their son at the hospital.
They then drove to the dorms to pick up the son's bags for spring break.
They were all in the dorm area, when the son came out of the building, went to the car, retrieved the gun, and then went back in and shot his parents.
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William Parcher
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He seems to have had a psychotic break from reality and it hasn't been reported yet if it was caused by drugs or medication or what.
But regardless, again we have serious mental illness and a shooting.
But regardless, again we have serious mental illness and a shooting.
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Which arguments from the NRA do you think are valid?
When I hear people commenting on what the NRA are suggesting, it seems to be things like needing more armed guards, armed teachers, or more checks for illegally held guns etc.
If those are their main responses then I think that's more like a smokescreen to divert the discussion away from facing the fact that the main reason for the vast number of shootings in the US, is such ready access to guns and bullets in so many ordinary family homes.
And I just say “in ordinary family homes” because I think it's obvious that if the USA's 100-million or so gun owners were not able to keep loaded guns so easily available in their own home (e.g. if they had to store their guns at a secure gun club), then that would slash the number of gun deaths down to minimal numbers by that fact alone.
OK, well that's actually news to me if "in most states" you can buy guns and bullets without any sort license or permit at all ... do you really mean that? You mean that in most of the USA you just walk into a shop (or go on-line) and just pay for the guns and bullets with no questions asked at all?
However, even if that's true (is it? Is that what you really mean?), as I just pointed out in the previous post – even with the mass/spree shootings, over the past 30 years, across all those shootings the stats apparently show that 82% of those cases were with the attacker using “legally owned” guns. And as I tried to explain – the figure of “legally owned” is almost certain to be much higher (higher even than 82%) for all the other non-mass/non-spree shootings where a gun owner has simply shot at various people in an act of temper or anger etc.
So according those quoted figures, almost all the guns involved in almost all the US deadly shooting figures over the past 30 years, have been what is described as “legally owned”. And Cruz himself was apparently using “legally owned guns” in the Florida School shooting …
… so I think it's impossible upon those figures to make out any case at all for saying the problem of US gun deaths is from “illegally owned guns”.
Of course I did not say that Americans are “a shot-and-a-beer away from mayhem” and “just a hairsbreadth from homicide”. And nor of course did I say or imply that people in the US have a dangerous drink problem any more than people in Britain (I said not one word about any such idea). All of that is a 100% misrepresentation of what I said.
What I said was that according to typical figures the US has about 100-million people owning about 300-million guns (that excludes guns held by the military). And from that lot there are typically about 10,000 to 13,000 people shot dead each year (i.e. homicides), plus a further 20,000 or so suicides each year, plus about 70,000 non-fatal shootings each year (see the link below below for those typical stats/figures).
But almost all of those annual homicides are NOT the mass-spree shooting that naturally hit all the press headlines. The vast majority are instead cases where a gun owner has simply shot and killed one or more people (less than 4 people … since 4 and above is usually considered a “mass” shooting) in a fit of rage or anger or in an argument or dispute of some sort, e.g. family arguments in the family home, or disputes with a neighbour etc. …
… and the point I am making about the role of alcohol and drugs is simply that if you drink to any excess at home (as is absolutely certain to be the case at various times of the year for tens of thousands of US gun owners) and where you also keep loaded guns in your home, than that combination of freely available guns and impaired judgement from excess alcohol or recreational drugs, becomes an absolutely lethal combination.
None of which is a rant against people getting drunk, nor is it even a rant against use/misuse of drugs. And it's not a rant against people in the US vs people in UK either. I am just pointing out that alcohol and guns makes a lethal combination … and one which is also quite certain to be a very common situation for tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of people every year in the US (but not at all common in most homes in the UK, simply because whilst just many get drunk, hardly any of them have guns in their house).
Re. the approximate stats/figure I gave above – here is a Wiki link with extensive stats/figures for gun ownership and gun deaths in USA -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States
Well you are mixing up two different things here. The guns in UK homes are almost entirely shotguns and small calibre rifles owned by farmers and sports shooters in framing areas. As I explained above (with the stats) – hardly anyone else ever keeps a gun in a UK home. But …
… do farmers and sports shooters kill or wound people after drunken disputes? Well, the answer is, I expect, almost certainly, Yes! …. but the numbers are not likely to be anywhere near what they are in the US, simply because we don't have 100 million people with all sorts of much more advanced high-power guns and vast masses of bullets in their homes (not even in the homes of those UK farmers and sports shooters).
Well, you are not getting any serious argument from me against that.
OK, well I think there is a problem with the above reasoning/logic. Specifically this – yes, of course “Just banning military style weapons, and in fact most semis, would without question reduce overall figures”; but the difference between what you and I are saying, is that I think it will make such a small difference as to be barely noticeable …
… it would not deter any spree shooter like Cruz for example. All of those spree shootings with mass deaths at schools and cinemas and elsewhere, have afaik been acts where the killer has typically planed the event for months if not years. The fact that any such shooter could no longer get a legal license or permit for something like an AR15, will not mean that a single one of those shooters would just forget the whole idea. Not at all. They will just go right ahead using their choice from hundreds of other extremely potent guns and ammo ..
… true, if Cruz was forced to use something less powerful than an AR15 he might have only been able to kill half the number of people in the same short space of time. And you could argue that was an improvement worth having. But it's absolutely not facing up to the actual problem (which is the free availability of such guns and bullets kept at home), and it still will not stop just as many people like Cruz making just as many spree attacks … because without any AR15's or anything similar at all, they still have a vast overkill-mass-surfeit of deadly guns to choose from.
But even more importantly, where the vast mass of the US shootings each year are NOT spree shooting such as that in the Florida school, but are instead the sort of incidents I described above where a home owner has simply taken his guns and decided for various reasons to shoot at people … hardly any difference will be made to the numbers of dead and wounded in that vast mass of 99% of the US shootings just by stoping people keeping guns like AR15's at home.
True, you could make a big a difference to the annual number of gun deaths just by banning various types of guns and banning the amount of bullets kept in peoples homes, BUT you would need to ban almost all of the guns in order to start making any really big reduction in the death-numbers … and that's really obvious and inescapable, since there will be almost as many deaths if US owners only have a choice of even 20% of the types of guns they can currently get now.
OK, well I need to know more clearly what you said near the top of this page about “most states” not requiring any license, so please see what I said above in response to that. However, as I pointed out above –
- over the past 30 years, 82% of all spree shootings were apparently using legally owned guns. And if you take all the other 10,000+ homicides each year plus the 70,000 or so woundings, that figure of 82% legally owned is almost certain to rise well into the range over 90%+ … on which basis, it's completely wrong for the NRA or gun-fanatics to claim that illegal ownership is the problem. On those same numbers, it looks like more registration is only going to shift the legally-owned numbers upwards from a current 80%-90% or more to nearer 100%, and that last extra few percent of registration is very unlikely to stop the 100 million people who currently own guns in the US from continuing to kill tens of thousands of people each year.
IOW – I think that will prove to be a set of paperwork form-filling excises, that do little or nothing to stop the actual fact of so many loaded guns in so many homes, from where, for any of numerous reasons, that home gun owner can simply pick up the gun (whether certificated or not) and shoot almost anyone he likes at any time.
If you asked what I think would actually produce a serious reduction in the number of US gun deaths every year, then the answer is that I think the only way to do that is to have far fewer guns in the homes of ordinary US people. But I think that more certificates, more registration and more background checks etc. will have almost zero impact (for all the reasons explained above). And similarly it's obvious that just banning weapons like the AR15 will not provide any barrier or deterrent at all for all those millions of US citizens who already “legally own” any of scores of other types of completely deadly modern guns along with enough”ammo” to mow-down a small army!
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ponderingturtle
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No if you buy from a store they check your name against the federal list of people banned from buying guns and if there you can't. Of course states are not obligated to report these things owing to a case the NRA backed.
Buying in a private sale of course is generally legal.
Handguns, rifles and ammunition are regulated differently under federal law and by the individual states. In general, no licenses or permits are required. Commercial sales are subject to federal instant background checks. Private sales are generally not regulated and no background checks are required, although you're not supposed to sell guns to people who you have reason to believe shouldn't have them. Some states -- but not most -- impose their own licensing, registration, waiting periods, etc. If you buy a gun online it must be delivered to you through a licensed firearms dealer. The right to carry a concealed handgun is regulated and licensed separately by the states, not the federal government. Ammunition is an over-the-counter or mail order purchase in most states, no ID, no records. Every Walmart has glass cabinets with shelves of ammunition.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/doesn-t-make-sense-how-easy-it-buy-gun-n490756
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/02/world/international-gun-laws.html
http://lawcenter.giffords.org/gun-laws/policy-areas/background-checks/background-check-procedures/
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Thermal
August Member
The NRA has their core arguments and then their PR positions. The armed teachers thing is PR; a core argument is that law-abiding citizens have the right to privately defend themselves with their own guns. The NRA relies far too much on slippery slope arguments, and across the board I think they do more harm than good.
There are two pretty much insurmountable problems with this argument: one is that there are not many gun clubs in the states that have anything resembling secure storage facilities for the 300,000,000 guns. There is one shooting range within 100 miles of my home, with no storage facilities at all. Proper ranges themselves are not much more than repurposed fields that do double duty for other functions (other areas may have better ranges). The second is the American principle of having guns at home for self-defense. That one is too core to American gun owners to be given up lightly. After all, why have a gun for self-defense if it is locked away at some remote location? Touching back on NRA arguments, they run a periodical with a column called the Armed Citizen or something, where they collect nation-wide news reports on people protecting themselves and others against criminals with guns. We do have our share of heavily armed bad guys over here, and the gun advocates have a valid point in wanting to lawfully defend themselves.
Absolutely. Only 7 out of the 50 States (and Washington, D.C.) require purchasing permits for long guns. 13 States (+DC) require permits to buy handguns. The vast majority require not a damn thing to buy, see link below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_by_state
But as I pointed out, legally owned means almost nothing in most States. Pretty much means it wasn't reported stolen and the owner met some flimsy minimum standards (not a convicted felon, etc). Private sales are almost entirely unregulated, so damn near any purchase is technically legal. I would also consider Cruz's weapons to not have been 'legal', because they were bought with the intention of being used for mass murder, along with the other crimes he committed in carrying and using it at the scene.
Well, to be fair, in your post #2655:
IanS said:
'Just lost his temper or got drunk and shot someone'. You say a similar thing two paragraphs below. I'll take your word that you didn't mean that Americans so lightly become killers, but can you see how it might read that way?
It can, no doubt. But does it regularly happen? I'm not so sure. Getting drunk does not necessarily equal getting murderous. I think that it a far larger leap than you portray it as, although I do not know the stats offhand.
Over 2.2 million firearms in UK households, per Nessie's links. Far more than I would have thought. But you assume an American who gets angry or drunk and has a gun around will, tens or hundreds of thousands of times every year, shoot someone. Does it make sense to you that someone bent on even drunken or angry murder might...I don't know...try to kill by another means? A murderer might prefer a gun for it's ease, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't limit himself to that option only. It's really not all that easy to be an accurate shooter when sober (trust me). Our theoretical drunk/angry guy is not likely to be the big killer in the US. Your cites above do not distinguish, for instance, between gang crime, robberies, etc and angry guy impulse killings.
Put another way, you seem to divide killings into mass murders and the drunk/angry guy. I think the vast majority are suicides and street crime, which don't fit in either of those categories.
Agreed, the numbers might be lower because of not having high power guns (which I am advocating the US reign in in a big way). But weren't you arguing recently that banning high power firearms wouldn't make 'one iota' of difference? BTW, I don't know that Americans have 'vast masses' of bullets in their homes either. Seriously, we are really not that bad.
Just a quick note here- the number would be far less than half. The ability to 'spray' rounds is what the semis bring to the table. And I don't think Cruz was a determined, calculating killer. He was a punk who did it the easy way. If it was significantly harder to get firearms in Florida, we may have never heard of him.
Hellz no. This doesn't happen in the kind of numbers you imply. The cites you provide include criminal activity (gangs, robbers, etc); they nowhere suggest random homeowners (?) running around shooting people.
Well, yes, if you effectively ban all the private guns and ammo in homes, gun crime should go down. Not doing much to the black market guns that only criminals would then have, but okay. But what you propose is even more sweeping than UK's policy. Guns and bullets are stored in homes there, correct? And from the practical standpoint, the genie is long out of the bottle over here. 300,000,000 genies are out, in fact. Proposing ripping them out of the homes of citizens who have supported private ownership of guns for centuries is a losing battle.
Um...do you see what I mean about suggesting we are loose cannons?
What you are proposing is far stricter than UK regulations. And again, gun clubs with storage are not really a thing here. And what about hunters? How about people in rural areas who have real problems with bears? Hell, we have black bears in NJ less than 20 miles from the beaches.
Yes, effectively disarming the American people should result in less gun crime. No, it will never, ever, ever gain any popular support, even from our most anti of the anti gunners. Shouldn't the discussion stay focused on the achievable measures? Even talking about removing all guns from homes is enough to quadruple NRA membership overnight. Please, think of the children.
thaiboxerken
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" Does it make sense to you that someone bent on even drunken or angry murder might...I don't know...try to kill by another means? "
Nope. Because a gun keeps the murderer relatively safe compared to other violent methods. Also, there are studies that the mere presence of a gun causes violent thoughts and reactions.
Nope. Because a gun keeps the murderer relatively safe compared to other violent methods. Also, there are studies that the mere presence of a gun causes violent thoughts and reactions.
How did you miss the word "can" in the sentence you are responding to?
You've leapt from "the presence of a gun in the house means that people can vent their anger by shooting" (in terms) to "you're saying we're loose cannons" (in terms). That's just silly. A situation in which someone has the ability to do something doesn't in any way reflect on the population from which that person comes.*
It's indisputable that if someone has access to a loaded gun that they have the ability to shoot someone if they lose their temper. That isn't a loaded sentence. It says nothing about America or Americans, and the fact that you are trying to turn it into a such an argument suggests you have gone out of your way to find something to take offense at.
*What does reflect on the population from which that person comes is their attitude to the consequences of having such accessible weaponry.
Thermal
August Member
Take a look at the posts: repeated references to Americans getting drunk or angry and shooting people. From the same post:
[
IanS said:
Am reading into that, too? Not exactly subtle.
Thermal
August Member
No offense is taken. I think the discussion is pretty cordial. But please, how am I misreading this?'The vast mass of US shootings are when a homeowner has simply taken his guns and decided for various reasons to shoot people.'
'The vast mass of US shootings are when a homeowner has simply taken his guns and decided for various reasons to shoot people.'
You have suggested repeatedly that this sort of thing is an attack on Americans, whereas, in the context of a conversation on shootings in America, it is nothing other than a statement of (claimed) fact.
If it means anything
Of the dealings with normal americans I have had (and i have had a fair bit) there are a couple of things I have noticed with guns.
Might be mistaken in my evaluating of their leanings, but I think I'm usually pretty good.
The vast majority of them I would consider left don't want to ban all guns
The vast majority of them I would consider right thought that their should be proper controls on who can have semi autos
Of the dealings with normal americans I have had (and i have had a fair bit) there are a couple of things I have noticed with guns.
Might be mistaken in my evaluating of their leanings, but I think I'm usually pretty good.
The vast majority of them I would consider left don't want to ban all guns
The vast majority of them I would consider right thought that their should be proper controls on who can have semi autos
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Well I suppose I should feel grateful that your complaint is only that you are just “slightly” irritated. I guess that's not too terrible for you then (given the importance of the subject where huge numbers of innocent people are being shot dead each year in the US).
Look - where you are talking about guns owned in the UK, you are talking almost entirely about shotguns and small calibre hunting rifles used by UK farmers and sports shooters on rural farmland, to shoot at birds, rabbits and so-called "vermin". Apart from that, afaik, you do also have quite a large number of other types of rifles and pistols used and stored at gun clubs in the UK.
But what you definitely do not have, is guns kept in normal family homes in all the high-population areas of the main towns and cities ... there are almost NO guns that you will ever find in the vast majority of normal private homes in the UK ... and THAT is the crucial point, because that is the complete opposite of the USA where tens of millions (if not hundreds of millions) of people do keep all manner of different types of very high power guns (not just AR15 and the like, but hundreds of other almost equally deadly types of guns) and huge masses of ammo which is afaik often extra high penetration hugely destructive stuff all in their own private homes ... that is the big difference between the USA gun ownership vs. gun ownership in private homes in the UK ...
... and be clear also about this (afaik this is the case) - all the vast number of shooting cases that happen every year in the US, are NOT cases where a US farmer or bird shooter in the wilds of the outback, has travelled into town with his shotgun or 0.22 slow-action rifle and 20 bullets, and tried to shoot-up a school or cinema or whatever ... the figures that we are talking about in the US for all those public shootings, are afaik (is this correct?) coming almost entirely from gun owners who are private citizens taking their guns and bullets from their own homes out on to the streets where they then start shooting numbers of people dead .... well that does not happen in the UK (or other parts of EU probably), simply because we no longer have loaded guns like that in peoples private homes ...
... it's the fact of having all those guns and ammo so instantly and easily available in private US homes, which is afaik producing the great majority of the huge number of US public shootings every year. If you ever want to stop (or seriously reduce) the number of victims each year, year-after-year without end, then the only way to do that is to remove that instant easy source of the guns in private homes.
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You're doing it again. If a person is going to go and shoot someone, do you think he'll be put off by the fact that he has to load a few bullets into the weapon first? Having a gun and ammunition in the house is the thing you should be talking about, not whether the ammunition is in the gun.
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