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Originally Posted by MT2008
I am sympathetic to you, but I hope you would never compare your brother to someone like Lanza? As I told JCordell, the vast, vast majority of people with mental illnesses are not mass murderers.
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No I'm not comparing my brother to Lanza. Nor do I think most people with mental illness will commit mass murder. But I've been around my brother when he's in a bad place. I never knew what he was going do or how to talk him down. Basically you can't be rational with a crazy person.
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Originally Posted by MT2008
I heard body armor, but it might have been negligent reporting. Holmes was wearing body armor, though, wasn't he? Also, my point still stands: Armed citizens carrying concealed handguns will be outgunned by somebody carrying an AR-15. So unless we advocate for schools to have armory rooms full of AR-15s and Kevlar vests, I don't think that the "more guns, less crime" argument is one that we should use in situations like this. It's just embarrassing for me to hear it.
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They always say body armor at first, then it's usually a tactical vest. The first rule of a gunfight is have a gun! Yournamehere made some great points with his reasoning behind it.
Now I don't fall into that "more guns, less crime" bit either. The more guns out there, then there's more that could potentially be stolen and used in a crime. But if more non-gun people are getting into guns and being responsible that's great. Gun education is key.
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Originally Posted by MT2008
And? I don't support a new AWB (and I was quite relieved when the last one expired). You're preaching to the choir.
I do, however, want pro-gunners to stop claiming that AR-15s are not significantly more dangerous than hunting rifles and acknowledge that maybe they should require a somewhat higher level of regulation. I say this as somebody who owns both an AK and an AR-15 carbine.
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What kind of regulation would you propose? Registration? That seems like it would be one step closer to having them confiscated or "required to be turned in". (I don't buy into that confiscation bit either, but people are looking for something to blame.) There's so many of them out there right now in private hands, it would be impossible to track as well.
More dangerous than hunting rifles. My father has a Remington Model 750, semi-auto .308 "hunting rifle" it takes a detachable box magazine. Usually around 5 rounds I think, it will accept larger ones as well. Making it capable of doing just has much damage as my L1A1 in the wrong hands. (I don't even want to get into that hi-cap mag or "battle clips" they are sometimes referred as.) While the AR, AK and L1A1's etc manual of arms make for a better fighting rifle. A gun is gun at the end of the day no matter what it looks like.
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Originally Posted by MT2008
You act as though straw purchases are something that we can't do anything about. You also talk about illegal guns as if they magically appear out of thin air (or from the same international arms trade which arms terrorists and insurgencies around the world). The vast, VAST majority of the illegal weapons used in the United States start out as legally-purchased firearms from gun stores. Illegal acquisition and illegal source are two very different things; as long as most illegally-acquired weapons come from a legal source, it is dishonest to act as though gun control has no ability to reduce illegal acquisition of firearms.
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Thin air, come on! I figured you thought better of me than that. How does one go about checking a potential straw purchase? After a gun is purchased, the law shows up at your house a month or so later to see if you still have it? How do guns get stolen? By having them too accessible to others besides yourself. That seems to be the case with Lanza's mother and she paid dearly for it and so did a lot of kids and teachers.
When I first started buying guns, I kept them in a gun cabinet. It would keep a kid out but that's about it. As the collection grew I ran out of room and had to to keep several handguns in a dresser drawer. I thought to myself 'this is bad', it's not only bad, but irresponsible. So I bought a gun safe. Now I know not everyone has enough guns to warrant a large and expensive safe. But even just a simple metal cabinet would help a lot.