Yet another school shooting

[rubato]

I think we should require that the shooting sports pay for the cost to society of allowing them to have guns. That will provide a substantial incentive for those who lawfully manufacture, sell, and own guns and ammunition to be better at controlling the distribution of guns and to be more effective in keeping them away from people who have criminal intent or serious mental illness (as seems probable in this case).

Up to now the NRA and other pro-gun lobbies have been allowed to get away with externalizing the costs of their hobbies. They blame everyone else for their own failure to regulate themselves and we let them get away with it.

All we have to do is calculate the costs/year in crimes, lives lost, and injuries and divide it up into an annual tax on the ownership of guns, the purchase of guns, or the purchase of ammunition. When they are successful in reducing the costs, as I think they will be, we reduce the tax proportionately.

If this young man had a neighbor, or neighbors, who were interested in guns and knew the consequences to their sport of a mass shooting like just happened they could have questioned his mother about the avail. of guns. By the later accounts he was obviously deeply disturbed, this wasn't a secret. By this means we would enlist the vigilance of the community in stopping this. Right now the NRA lobbies just wave their hands and say "it's not the gun's fault". But it is theirs. And if we give them a large enough motivation to overcome their shyness, laziness, moral cowardice, or whatever keeps them from following up and doing something enough of them will to make a difference.

Another thing we can do is run public-interest ads, like calif. has very effectively done to get people stop smoking, which show the costs to society of failing to store guns safely and of illegal transfers of guns. And pay for the ads with taxes on the sale of guns.


yrs,
rubato

[liberty]

Anyone can set up meth lab in their basement. The same isn't true of a gun factory.

This thing is bad enough to give a parent a pain in the center of the chest and a depressed feeling, but that does not change the fact you are wrong. One does not need a factory to make guns. You couldn’t do it but you are not everyone, I doubt that you could repair a screen door if your life depended on it. Anyone with a basic mechanical aptitude, the necessary tools and sufficient motivation could do it. It is a skill like making meth or anything else, the first ones would be crude, but quality would improve with experience. Hell people have even built homemade air planes they are more complicated that a gun.

[Grim Reaper]

There are hundreds of millions of guns in the USA. Getting people to stop using them now would be nearly impossible.

What we could do more easily is promote mental health services instead of chopping them every time the budget gets tight.

[rubato]

Anyone can set up meth lab in their basement. The same isn't true of a gun factory.

This thing is bad enough to give a parent a pain in the center of the chest and a depressed feeling, but that does not change the fact you are wrong. One does not need a factory to make guns. You couldn’t do it but you are not everyone, I doubt that you could repair a screen door if your life depended on it. Anyone with a basic mechanical aptitude, the necessary tools and sufficient motivation could do it. It is a skill like making meth or anything else, the first ones would be crude, but quality would improve with experience. Hell people have even built homemade air planes they are more complicated that a gun.

Don't feel bad. Many have people with questions of degree rather than black and white questions.

The number of people who can make a reasonably well-functioning firearm is small and the number who would is even smaller. And making guns one at a time is a slow process compared to a modern factory so Scooter is exactly correct. It would create a severe limit on the availability of guns compared with making drugs which even at a modest scale of operation produces thousands of doses at a time.

yrs,
rubato

[liberty]

Paramount postpones Pa. premiere of Cruise film 'Jack Reacher' after Conn. school shooting
By Alicia Rancilio, The Associated Press | Associated Press – 10 hrs ago
•NEW YORK, N.Y. - The U.S. premiere of the Tom Cruise action movie "Jack Reacher" is being postponed following the deadly Connecticut school shooting.
Paramount Pictures says "out of honour and respect for the families of the victims" the premiere won't take place Saturday in Pittsburgh, where "Jack Reacher" was filmed.
The premiere would've been Cruise's first U.S. media appearance since his split from Katie Holmes over the summer. It was to be more contained with select outlets covering and a location away from Hollywood or New York.
A proclamation ceremony for Cruise had been planned with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.
No new date for the premiere has been set. The movie opens Dec. 21.
Friday's massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school killed 20 children and several adults.

[Scooter]

Anyone can set up meth lab in their basement. The same isn't true of a gun factory.

This thing is bad enough to give a parent a pain in the center of the chest and a depressed feeling, but that does not change the fact you are wrong. One does not need a factory to make guns. You couldn’t do it but you are not everyone, I doubt that you could repair a screen door if your life depended on it. Anyone with a basic mechanical aptitude, the necessary tools and sufficient motivation could do it. It is a skill like making meth or anything else, the first ones would be crude, but quality would improve with experience. Hell people have even built homemade air planes they are more complicated that a gun.

Fine, you build yourself an AK-47 and post a picture of it here when you're done.

Moron.

[Joe Guy]

I'm now hearing that the shooter's mother was a gun collector.

I'm not blaming the mother for this tragedy but do you think it was a good idea for her to have all those guns and ammunition around her son who had a history of mental problems, including Asperger syndrome?

[rubato]

There are hundreds of millions of guns in the USA. Getting people to stop using them now would be nearly impossible.

What we could do more easily is promote mental health services instead of chopping them every time the budget gets tight.

Well first of all I would start by saying that this is a problem with a longish time-frame if we are going to make progress. Calif. has reduced smoking from 26% to 12% by patient efforts over about 28 years. Just because we cannot succeed this year is not a reason not to use that method.

If we charged people a 'user fee' for each gun they own per my above post they will be better incentivized to secure them safely. They might have a more powerful motive get rid of guns they don't actually want to be responsible for; once 'responsible' has a concrete financial meaning.

yrs,
rubato

[Daisy]

I'm now hearing that the shooter's mother was a gun collector.

I'm not blaming the mother for this tragedy but do you think it was a good idea for her to have all those guns and ammunition around her son who had a history of mental problems, including Asperger syndrome?

I am entirely blaming the mother for this,just because you CAN own a gun doesn't mean you should, let alone own a semi automatic weapon.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[rubato]

I'm now hearing that the shooter's mother was a gun collector.

I'm not blaming the mother for this tragedy but do you think it was a good idea for her to have all those guns and ammunition around her son who had a history of mental problems, including Asperger syndrome?

I am blaming the mother and all of her neighbors who knew he was mentally ill and and knew she had guns in the house. Both she and they had a moral duty to act. They created this tragedy.

yrs,
rubato

[Joe Guy]

If the mother hadn't been a victim, should she be prosecuted?

For what?

[rubato]

If the mother hadn't been a victim, should she be prosecuted?

For what?

Do you think that negligently providing weapons to a person with obvious mental problems who then became mass murderer should be a legal activity?

yrs,
rubato

[Scooter]

Anyone whose carelessness allows a gun to get into the hands of someone who kills with it should be charged with murder. That includes parents who leave unsecured guns around their kids, gun vendors who sell weapons without performing background checks, and people whose lax storage of their weapons allow them to be stolen.

[Joe Guy]

Do you think that negligently providing weapons to a person with obvious mental problems who then became mass murderer should be a legal activity?

By "negligently providing weapons" are you referring to the fact that he could access them or are you saying that she gave them to him?

And you didn't answer my question.

[Joe Guy]

Anyone whose carelessness allows a gun to get into the hands of someone who kills with it should be charged with murder.

If a person were to use someone else's carelessly stored gun to defend someone that was trying to kill somebody, should the person who carelessly stored the gun be hailed as a hero?

[Gob]

I'm now hearing that the shooter's mother was a gun collector.

I'm not blaming the mother for this tragedy but do you think it was a good idea for her to have all those guns and ammunition around her son who had a history of mental problems, including Asperger syndrome?

You'd take away her 2 nd amendment rights, just because she had a loony son?

Edited to add; normally I'd put a winky after this, just to let Joe know I mean it in a light hearted way, but this is not the time nor place for winkies, the point stands as is.

[Joe Guy]

I'm now hearing that the shooter's mother was a gun collector.

I'm not blaming the mother for this tragedy but do you think it was a good idea for her to have all those guns and ammunition around her son who had a history of mental problems, including Asperger syndrome?

You'd take away her 2 nd amendment rights, just because she had a loony son?

She shouldn't have made the weapons accessible to her loony son.

That doesn't mean she shouldn't have the right to own them.

[Gob]

Hell, I don't know Joe. Personally I'd never leave my two girls alone at home unless I knew that they had access to these;



I mean they live in a modern civilised society, so how could anyone deny them the right to own such weapons...

[Joe Guy]

Good thinking, Gob.

Now I've just heard that all of the children were shot with a rifle. Until now it was reported that he had a rifle but had left it in the car.

[Gob]

The two pistols were found inside the school and a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle was found in the back of his mother's car in the parking lot.

"The damage these weapons can do is just horrific," firearms expert Ronald Scott said.

All three are highly lethal weapons manufactured for combat and to stop criminals. The semi-automatic Glock and SIG Sauer are the two most popular firearms used by law enforcement officers around the country and by private gun owners, said Scott.

The Glock, made in Austria, and the American-made SIG Sauer can fire up to five bullets a second at a velocity of 1,200 feet a second.

Scott said the shooter likely used hollow point bullets, “"The bullet is meant to open up like a flower ... The nose of the bullet and spreads open, creating a devastating wound through tissue and organ that sends the victim into almost immediate shock."

I can sleep peacefully at night knowing my girls have adequate fire-power.