Is there any way to prevent mass shootings????

Maybe it shouldn’t be so easy to get a gun and shoot people.

Make it common practice for everyone to be armed, and trained in self-defense.

Violence was invented before TV.

The problem is caused by many factors, but one that would have a major impact is simply reinstating the bans on assault rifles and very large magazines. I have friends from the rural South who grew up with guns, hunting and target-shooting, and they say that there is no rational reason for someone outside the military to have an AR-15, or for bump stocks and large magazines to be sold freely. If you’re a rotten-enough shot that you can’t hit a deer with a standard rifle, you shouldn’t be trusted with a gun in the first place.

And an AR-15 isn’t something you want for home defense, either, because it shoots through your average wall and would likely kill your next-door neighbor or family member in the next room. I’ve trained on and carried an M-1 and was taught the principles of using an old-fashioned Uzi, and we all drilled on gun safety and not accidentally shooting any of the people we were supposed to be protecting.

Military-type guns are not toys. Military-type rifles are for killing enemy combatants. Period. If you need to play shoot-em-up with an M-16, try a video-game like Call of Duty. Leave the military stuff to the professionals.

Midwest
what is the difference between an ar-15 and ruger mini 14 in terms of all your points.
1)They both shoot the same caliber bullet
2) those bullets will both punch through walls
3) they both fire at the same rate of speed
4) they both allow for high capacity magazines
Yet one is an “assault rifle” and the other a “semi automatic “ rifle and hence not affected by the assault ban laws

Second question
Since all you need to do to turn an ar-15 into a regular non assault rifle is to cut the protruding part of the grip, isn’t the whole concept of an “assault “ rifle intellectually disengenuous?

I don’t think the 2nd amendment applies anymore. It was created at the time when there was no police and people had to protect themselves.

Mentsch1 – Your first post, drawn from Wikipedia, has some good points. Those are all factors, especially the copycat issue, since a lot of mass shooters were obsessed with previous killings. However, the number of guns has gone up, and the types of guns have skewed toward the lethal assault-type. (I’ll try to get you cites on that. I’m a registered Wikipedia editor 🙂

Second post: the current official difference between assault and non-assault rifles was a political compromise, not a practical judgment. It was hammered out in the conference rooms of Congress in an attempt to get the legislation passed in spite of the gun industry. (I was following it when it happened – just after the assassination attempt on Pres. Reagan.) What we need is a ban on civilian ownership of any gun that is or could be converted to automatic or semi-automatic. Combat weapons belong in the hands of the military and the police, not well-meaning but untrained civilians. Unless you’re a white nationalist who thinks he has to defend himself against the government, a plain old rifle or shotgun is going to kill your deer or your home intruder just fine.

midwest
at least that was an honest answer
you are promoting confiscation of all semi automatic weapons
which brings on the next point
compliance and violation of civil liberties
after sandy hook, nys passed the safe act, the most sweeping anti AW ban in the country
part of that ban included the obligation to register existing AW
50K weapons were registered out of an estimated 1 milion (5% compliance rate, from a forbes article)
which means hundreds of thousands of previously law abiding NYers instantly became felons

now you want a total semi auto ban. What do you think will happen if the govt suddenly tries to confiscate all those weapons. Worst case scenario civil war especially in places like Texas. Best case (assuming a low percentage of compliance) is half the US suddenly become felons. And do you think gun violence will end?
fact: the vast majority of gun deaths in the US are from handguns
So if you balance these factors which is the better of two evils?

We may come to an enlightened time where we voluntarily give up our weapons. But govt confiscation will unleash heartache on millions of families and what gives us the right to cause that chaos? your assumption that death will stop knocking on peoples door when all guns are gone?

Midwest
I pointed to statistics of the most recent attempt to register guns and that was five percent compliance. Just to register people ignored the law and risk felony conviction.
That was just to register, you are talking confiscation which by all measure of logic should result in far worse reaction.
I think my citing recent case history is far more indicative of future events then your guess.
Which leads us to the question of why government should be allowed to turn law abiding citizens into felons on such a mass scale?
In addition you have already admitted that there is no such thing as an AW. The only reason people support AW band is because they have no clue that AW is a made up term that applies to some cosmetic features of semi automatic rifles.
There is no logic to an AW ban when there are numerous legal equivalents.
Hashkafically I’ve also pointed out (after the same discussion after Vegas) that as frum Jews we believe people die from G-D, if these 14 hadn’t been killed by a gun they would have died in a bus accident on a school trip. So for politics we should turn millions of citizens into felons?

Gun control wouldn’t of stopped this.
If you have gun control, homemade bomb making will just go up.

8 months ago the shooter in question posted on Social Media that he “Plans on becoming a School Shooter”.
Post was reported by police and all they did was taken down.
He called the school multiple times and said he would come and kill people there.
He was a former student and known to be mentally unsound…

Yet no one really did anything.
I mean…seriously?

Guards would of worked.
Also submitting him into the psych ward when he was a student there for his erratic behavior would of worked too.

The whole situation is so sad. I know quite a few people who are freshman there, (the shooter was only in the freshman building)

Yes.
single point access with trained armed, and profiling security people at every school.

getting the act together with single database real background check, meshed with opening up phsych records. As most school shooters fit a very specific profile, the work should be narrowed.

A better armed and carrying populace.

@midwest 2 I am not a white nationalist, nor do I associate with them. I do, however, meet and schmooze with a lot of fellow gun owners (who are EXTREMELY friendly, and also very pro-Israel). With that in mind, the pretty much everyone I talk to says basically the same thing: an AR-15 ban could VERY easily turn into a revolution, and banning semi-autos would almost certainly lead to one. Let’s not forget that police or the military would have to kick in their own doors, and those of their buddies, because they are a large portion of private AR 15 owners. Let’s also not forget that gun owners see such a law as illegitimate and unconstitutional, and therefore non-binding. In the Australian gun ban, only 1/3 of gun owners turned in their guns. Do you think that here, in the US, where people grow up with guns and guns are a central part of their lives, they are going to roll over and allow their worst nightmares to become a reality?
Also, a single shot weapon is absolutely NOT enough for protection, whether inside the house or out. People miss (even cops and soldiers), especially under stress. that extra few seconds it takes to cock a weapon and re-acquire a target can easily be the difference between life and death. As for hunting, animals move. It is easier to hit a moving animal or multiple stationary animals with a semi-auto rifle. Not to mention that the AR-15 is:
Already the most popular rifle in the US
Light enough for smaller people or older people to easily use.
Lighter to carry on day-long or longer hunting trips than a big bolt action and the larger ammo
Functions better in muddy or wet field conditions than a bolt action rifle
Can easily be adapted to hunt deer, big game, or birds in a few seconds
Is good for protecting a ranch or farm against smaller animals like coyotes
Is a good rifle to use during competitions, due to its modularity
Is easy to clean
Is easy to replace parts
Is great for a practice rifle, especially when using a .22 caliber version.
I can go on and on about why people do need the AR 15. In summary, confiscation is impossible, a ban is useless at best, and the AR 15 is a great rifle with many practical uses.

@meno
An assault rifle is a type of military automatic rifle. Not to be confused with assault WEAPON, a term made up to make regular rifles sound scarier to people who don’t know much about guns.
Semi-automatic means that every time the trigger is pulled, one bullet comes out. Automatic means that when the trigger is held down, bullets come out until the magazine or belt runs out of bullets or the trigger is let go. These types of guns are almost impossible to get since the 30s, and once you go through the insane amount of checks and taxes they cost at least tens of thousands of dollars. They are used in a statistically insignificant amount of crimes.

Noyb – how many lives have been saved bc someone had assalt rifle instead of something else? And how many have been killed?

SHOCK: FBI Was Tipped Off In January But Did NOTHING; FL Gov Calls On FBI Director To Resign

Fully automatic- hold down the trigger and multiple bullets are fired.
Semi automatic- trigger must be pulled each time to fire, one bullet at a time.

The term assault rifle is mostly used by the anti gun lobby. As stated above, the AR 15 used in FL operates no differently than the sidearm carried by every police officer. They are just bigger and may have better accuracy. But they operate the same.
You can purchase a semi automatic handgun that is more powerful than an AR 15. (E.g. a 44 caliber Desert Eagle) .
I agree there is no need for a large capacity mag, but to ban AR15 bec they are an assault rifle is misleading and intellectually dishonest

If you agree with banning certain types of guns then it makes sense to ban the guns People are using in mass shootings. Who cares what they ar called? Assault rifle automatic it doesn’t matter. If you want to argue that it won’t help that’s another story.

@daasyochid So is every type of gun, knives, cars, hands (which killed more than double the people in 2016, which was easy to find data for, killed using an AR-15), blunt objects (also killed more people than murders using an AR-15)

Yeah, silly Nikolas Cruz, he should have just used his hands instead of an AR-15.

If you want to ban guns, but you don’t want to take away any guns, ban all new guns.

Today there is no way to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Anyone can make a gun using the Internet. There have even been cases of soldiers stealing guns from their bases and selling them to dealers.

Today there is no way to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Anyone can make a gun using the Internet. There have even been cases of soldiers stealing guns from their bases and selling them to dealers.

It’s true that a law passed tomorrow will not suddenly eliminate all guns, but if better regulations were enacted and enforced, there would be fewer guns around and fewer guns deaths.

Tell me, living in Israel, would you employ your reasoning to allow guns to be sold to Arabs?

I’ll just mention airguns here, because it adds nothing to the discussion, but the discussion has gotten too far in this direction anyhow.

There were many mass casualty incidents without the use of guns. 9-11, Oklahoma City, the tractor attacks in E”Y, the truck ramming attacks, particularly the one in Nice that killed 86 people. Banning guns is an emotional reaction. The right reaction is to determine the root cause of why these attacks are perpetuated, not to ban every possible means of attack.

It’s not an emotional reaction to ban one particularly efficient method of mass killing. It is folly to not try to save some lives because you can’t save all.

Do you really believe that if Nikolas Cruz wasn’t able to buy a gun, he would have rammed a truck into the school?

I’m all for determining “the root cause of why these attacks are perpetuated” (hint- some people are evil), but not to preclude taking common sense measures to prevent some of these events.

If we determine the root cause of why these attacks are perpetuated, and somehow manage to eradicate the desire some people have to commit these heinous crimes, then we’ll talk about allowing people to indiscriminately own AR-15s and the like. Until then, why give them the weapon which makes it easier and more likely to kill?

@daasyochid
I advocate for gun rights specifically because I am intellectually honest. Instead of formulating policy based on ” I know about this particular gun being used in some mass shootings” I look at the statistics (less than 1% of all murders annually are with rifles. Of that, an even smaller number uses AR15s), The effectiveness of any proposed legislation (Best case-no one listens, worst case-civil war), and if there are any solutions that would work (banning an AR is meaningless, all semi-auto guns function the same. Banning all semi-auto guns is almost impossible, would almost certainly cause a revolution, and would kill more than it saves because people would be unable to defend themselves.) I believe there are many other things that cause mass shootings, and solving those would be a lot more productive and possible. I also think that trying to attack someone instead of just thinking that maybe other people have different ideas on how to solve a problem prevents honest conversation, and calling me intellectually dishonest or implying I don’t care about dead kids doesn’t help. I do not think that the violence in America is tied to the “gun culture”, because according to studies by John Lott, in places like Texas and Florida, concealed carry permit holders are convicted of crimes at 1/6th the rate of cops. Additionally, pretty much everyone I have ever met in the “gun culture” has been nothing but kind. In another study, Lott found that concealed carry permit holders commit the fewest crimes of any demographic. So I don’t think it would be “intellectually dishonest” for me to say that “gun culture” is not the problem.

@jj2020 I did not say that it’s impossible to know if the AR 15 is needed for self-defense. You asked about a very specific thing, if there is any way to know if people who used an AR would not be able to defend themselves with something else. There is no way to know that, because it is not a statistic that anyone tracks. That doesn’t change the fact that the AR is a valuable defensive tool, it just means I can not definitively say that it is the only possible defensive tool. We should deal with mass killings, but not by banning ARs because the number of murders using them is minuscule compared to the number of reasonable uses, just like a hammer, a saw, or a kitchen knife, which are used for more murders than AR 15s but are not banned because they are mainly used legitimately.

NOYP
You highlight the problem with the “Gun culture”
you say making soem guns illegal would lead to ” civil war” and “VERY easily turn into a revolution”

Dont you see how crazy that is?
I get that you dont agree with the policy, so vote for legislators who favor whatever it is yo u favor. You cant claim gun enthusiasts are “very nice people” but if our democraticly elected government feels it is in our collective best intrest to give up these instruments of death, wel l then we wil start shooting . That is a death cult.

You want more people to have guns, fine keep fnding the NRA until every last school is a warzone, that is your right. But thretneing violence while claiming to be “nice guys” doent make much sense.

yungerman1
“The right reaction is to determine the root cause of why these attacks are perpetuated, not to ban every possible means of attack.”

so after 9/11 i assume you opposed locking airplane cockpits since that wouldnt have stopped Oklahoma city bombimg. Am I understanding you correctly?