For those members who are in U.S. and are following the school shooting

[MT2008]

Originally Posted by Jcordell

All they've done is villify gunowners and then push for more and more restrictions.

The vilification is not exclusive to one side. Gun owners are just as guilty of doing the same thing.

Originally Posted by Jcordell

Both sides need to meet in the middle. But so-far that hasn't happened. The NRA seems to be offering feelers, but they are feelers that come from strength. Unlike situation for British and Australian gunowners in 96 who had no strength. No organization and no voice.

That's the first reason why gun owners in America need to stop acting as though gun control laws here will inevitably lead to complete bans on firearms, as happened in both of those countries.

Originally Posted by Jcordell

All I can tell you is that the system is broken (I'm not sure it was ever working) and I have absolutely no idea how to improve it. Some of them are dangerous and most of them are just wrecks. And that is how it is in the United States.

In the past year it's been the mental cases who have been using the firearms to create the carnage. We need to also look at that situation as well.

Personally, I subscribe to the view that the issue is less one of mental illness and more of how the media glorifies these shootings. The vast majority of mentally ill people, including those prone to violent behavior, do not feel the urge to engage in mass shootings. The media, however, treats these events as a surefire way to gain eternal infamy and a place in the history books. The desire for fame (or, failing that, infamy) in our culture is, in my opinion, one of the most important reasons that these shootings take place. Mental illness and gun availability facilitate these crimes, but cannot be considered the causes.

Originally Posted by Jcordell

Dialogue? Sure. I'm okay with that. But I want us to be able to participate in the dialogue and negotiations. Not just have things thrown onto us like the old school European nobility did to the peasants. That won't fly.

I agree with you that we deserve to be able to negotiate from a position of strength, but in my opinion, the fact that there are so many gun owners is by itself a strength. Dialogue and negotiations cannot take place when both sides take part in the sort of demonizing each other that I am seeing.

Originally Posted by Jcordell

So I am sending the NRA fifty dollars becasue the NRA ensures that we are able to talk and negotiate from a position of strength. Not weakness.

The NRA also does not seem to be encouraging gun owners to keep cool heads. That has never been their tactic. They are more likely to get their constituents up in arms about bans and the "slippery slope".

Originally Posted by commando552

First of I just want to say that I am not trying to stir up anything here, am genuinely curious. How would the American gun owners on here feel about being required to have a firearms licence before buying firearms or ammunition? By this I don't mean like a license in the UK which is quite involved to get, I mean something like an hour or two classroom instruction on basic gun safety along with a background check. If you were required to show a license then the sale could be tracked if required, and would flag up instanced of criminals or the mentally ill trying to buy firearms or ammunition. If you need a license to drive a car, then it is my feeling is that there should be something along the same lines for you to be able to buy a gun which is potentially mush more of a danger to other people. I'm assuming that there has already been much discussion about stuff like this, just curious what the opinions on it were.

As an American gun owner, I think that your proposal is entirely reasonable. As Predator pointed out, the system you have suggested already exists for conceal-carry in many states. Also, what exactly is wrong with licenses like those issued in the U.K.? The system that the Brits had before the Hungerford massacre in 1987 seems to have been a reasonable one to me.

Originally Posted by predator20

I don't tell people this, but one of my older brothers is diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. (Lanza may not have been schizo, but you have got to be seriously fucked up to shoot and kill kids like that.) He doesn't live with me, so I don't have to be watchful unless he's around. But I never turn my back on him, even if he is on his meds. While he's never been violent towards any family members, but when he's off his meds he believes people are going to kill him, particularly our father. It happened to him in his late teens, early twenties like most others. He was in a care center for about seven years, now he's out on his own with his girlfriend. He was never bad enough to be put into a hospital.

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.

Originally Posted by predator20

body armor? I thought they were just tactical vest. Even with body armor it's still going to hurt like a bitch, unless you're the North Hollywood guys. With Aurora I don't believe someone there with a CCL would have made a difference. It was a dark and packed theater. The chances of a clear shot would have been nill. Newtown, maybe.

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.

Originally Posted by predator20

The biggest problem I have with an AWB is that most homicides that used a firearm are with handguns. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...es/10tbl20.xls http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr...ables/table-20 Illinois homicide rate is actually higher I think, they don't give out complete info I guess. It's probably up there with Cali.

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.

Originally Posted by predator20

The thing about criminals (this is the way I think anyway). They don't want to pay retail for a gun, like a law abiding citizen would. Especially if they have to dump it later on. So they either steal them or buy one that they know to be stolen. Or have their girlfriend do a straw purchase for a Hi-Point.

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.

Originally Posted by Excalibur

We should always promote the right to bear arms everywhere and change the way anti gun advocates think with educations.

Did you seriously just say "educations", plural? *SIGH* I know people make typos, but the difficulty you seem to have with reading and writing (demonstrated repeatedly over the years) keeps triggering my cringe reflex. The absolute last thing I would want is for somebody like you to be considered representative of American gun owners. I think you would be better off not acting as though you have superior powers of logic and analysis; you are essentially degrading gun controllers as intellectually wanting.

[commando552]

Originally Posted by MT2008

As an American gun owner, I think that your proposal is entirely reasonable. As Predator pointed out, the system you have suggested already exists for conceal-carry in many states. Also, what exactly is wrong with licenses like those issued in the U.K.? The system that the Brits had before the Hungerford massacre in 1987 seems to have been a reasonable one to me.

The UK licensing system works here, but there are a couple of parts that would never be accepted in America. First and foremost is the fact that in the UK, self defence is not an acceptable reason to own a firearm which would make a lot of Americans very unhappy. Secondly, in the UK you need to obtain permission for each new firearm you want to acquire (with the exception of regular shotguns or antique weapons), and give justification for why you want it. There are a few other parts which I think the USA could benefit from adopting, such as the requirement that firearms are locked up with only the license holder having access to them, along with limits on the amount of ammunition that can be stored, or purchased in one transaction.

Any changes in legislation that come in the following months need to be well thought out and reasoned, and not the knee jerk over-reactions that followed Hungerford and Dunblane massacres. The Firearms Amendment act of 1988 which followed Hungerford was baffling, banning all semi automatic rifle above .22 regardless of purpose or capacity, along with pump action rifles above .22 calibre but doing nothing about lever action rifles. The first Firearms Amendment act of 1997 which banned all handguns above .22 was over the top but understandable, but when Labour came ino power and followed up with a second act banning .22 pistols as well this was ridiculous. The only reason it happened was as a popularity move based on a petition which only got so many signatures as it was one of the first things of its sort distributed over the internet, and was signed by a large number of people with no knowledge of the subject (likely not realising that there was already a ban on the kind of weapons used in the Dunblane massacre) fuelled by emotion rather than logic.

[Jcordell]

Some good points MT2008. Well thought out responses.

[Excalibur]

I just heard this audio clip about Diane Finestein and that she carries a gun and here she is pushing for further gun control? What a hypocrite

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuBbLeqZbPA

[predator20]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

I just heard this audio clip about Diane Finestein and that she carries a gun and here she is pushing for further gun control? What a hypocrite

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuBbLeqZbPA

Most of them are hypocrites.

[commando552]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

I just heard this audio clip about Diane Finestein and that she carries a gun and here she is pushing for further gun control? What a hypocrite

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuBbLeqZbPA

My god, that guy's style of broadcasting annoys me. As to the content, I don't think that necessarily makes her a hypocrite. I do not know the specifics of her proposals, but someone can believe that guns are too prevalent and easy to acquire and still wish to carry a gun for personal protection. Hell, the first logically leads to the second.

[Yournamehere]

I'm still not clear on the details of the shooting myself, but from what I heard A: he wasn't wearing body armor, and B: he didn't use his Bushmaster, just his pistols. If that's the case, then (even though in hysteria it doesn't matter) calling for an AWB in the wake of this shooting is really unfounded.

No matter what weapon he used, I don't necessarily agree that someone is useless in this situation with a concealed handgun. Outgunned, definitely, but it's reasonable to say that you can make up with a lack of firepower with proper tactics. I'm not saying it's easy, just that it's conceivably doable, especially if the CCW has a reasonable amount of training/skill, and the shooter doesn't. Yes this is semantic, but it seems to be the case in most respects. It's also why I personally don't approve of all these micro carry guns, since they are light and great for carrying all the time but they offer very little in terms of firepower in the event of a mass shooting. Just as well, they're miles ahead of the other people in the vicinity without a gun of any kind. They have the option to engage the shooter to distract or even take them down with a proper shot, as opposed to being forced to run away with everyone else. I really try not to undermine or overestimate the weight one carries along with their concealed weapon, but it's a grey area, and it's certainly capable given the right parameters, more so than an empty hand.

The other thing is the idea that mass shooters tend to quit at the first sign of resistance, because, again, they usually lack skill as well as coherence in the situation to understand that they can outgun a single person wielding a pistol with their rifle or whatever they are using, and just like in any other gunfight, they have to take in all this information at 200 miles an hour, where the shots are coming from, how many shots and with what, and given they're in a mass shooting solely to go out with a bang, they can come to the conclusion that they are beat (thats why they were there in the first place), and so they off themselves even if rationally they may have been able to win said gunfight against said concealed weapon holder.

That's really the point I wanted to get across though, cause I really don't agree that CW holders are useless in mass shootings, especially if they are a prime example of a CW holder and consider all the factors before making a decision to bust or run. I agree that they are certainly outgunned and not as tactically prepared as a SWAT officer, but a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and being on scene or four minutes away means everything, and as long as they truly understand the weight they carry along with their gun and have proper mindset, they are an asset in the long run, especially compared to someone who is unarmed.

No, I don't think an AWB will do anything to prevent mass shootings, it will only serve to restrict law abiding gun owners. Yes, I am willing to negotiate on lets say background check reform, and I don't see it being too far fetched to ask that individuals take some sort of licensing course to own a gun, given the charge and time investment is appropriate and not ridiculously expensive or riddled with paperwork. Largely though, these incidents are caused by individuals making poor decisions and it's very hard to legislate against a mass of people due to individual bad decisions. Educating the public about firearms safety and use would ideally be the best course of action and leaving the choice of whether or not to carry the weight would be up to them, and they should have to suffer the consequences should they make a bad call. Mag capacity is also not correlative to any of these crimes either, especially since VTech, the most violent shooting happened with nothing but 10 round mags. Granted it reduces reloads, practically speaking, giving people the chance to rush the shooter but rarely do shooters get rushed and taken down anyway (the Arizona shooting is an exception). And again, a ban isn't going to delete weapons or mags or bullets from existence (even if it could, we shouldn't want to be stripped of our great equalizers anyway) and just as well, a CW with as many rounds on tap as possible is a pawn for a pawn in that situation.

Not as structured as I'd wanted it to be but I really needed an outlet for all my feelings on this shooting, and I really don't think that CWs holders are useless in a mass shooting. We always say guns are tools, and they are as evil as the person using them, and that means they are as good as the person using them too. The right for one to try and rein in that power and capability should be up to them.

[commando552]

Originally Posted by Yournamehere

It's also why I personally don't approve of all these micro carry guns, since they are light and great for carrying all the time but they offer very little in terms of firepower in the event of a mass shooting.

Bear in mind the instances of anyone drawing a carry gun during a mass shooting will be minuscule compared to someone drawing a gun during a one on one threat to themself or someone near by. I can't even begin to know what the statistic would be but I'm guessing we are talking a less than one in a thousand. For the majority of personal protection needs a sub-compact will be sufficient. Also bear in mind that a gun is only good if you are carrying it. With a light sub-compact you will be more likely to carry it all the time with whatever you are wearing, as opposed to a higher capacity weapon which you may not be able to wear with all clothing, and large and heavy enough that you may forego due to being an encumbrance.

[Yournamehere]

Originally Posted by Excalibur

Is that your way of saying "be quiet, the adults are talking?"

Not at all sir. I'm only justifying the objective parts of Matts statement, and saying that if you are going to stand for something, stand straight and tall, don't slouch. If you want to engage in rhetorical discussion, it's key that you say what you mean and mean what you say in the best, most articulate way possible, that's all. No need to be mad, guy.

Originally Posted by commando552

Bear in mind the instances of anyone drawing a carry gun during a mass shooting will be minuscule compared to someone drawing a gun during a one on one threat to themself or someone near by. I can't even begin to know what the statistic would be but I'm guessing we are talking a less than one in a thousand. For the majority of personal protection needs a sub-compact will be sufficient. Also bear in mind that a gun is only good if you are carrying it. With a light sub-compact you will be more likely to carry it all the time with whatever you are wearing, as opposed to a higher capacity weapon which you may not be able to wear with all clothing, and large and heavy enough that you may forego due to being an encumbrance.

Oh you're absolutely right, more robberies and other individual crimes happen than mass shootings by a wide margin, and a gun is a gun when it's one on one and you have the only gun. But weighing (excuse the pun) the detriments of the size and weight of heftier, higher capacity "fighting guns" against the detriments of a micro gun in any given fighting situation is what I look to. With a micro gun, you lose fighting edge for ease and consistency of carry, but with a fighting gun, you lose those traits for a better gun. And those more often than not are disciplinary issues that go along with carrying a gun in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I understand some people are physically limited to the gun they can carry through their strength or dress or whatever, but in a world where mass shootings are on the rise (in media coverage anyway) and a world where you have the ability to shoulder the very hefty yet possibly lifesaving weight of carrying a gun for self protection and the protection of others, those who are physically capable of carrying a bigger gun ought to.

I've seen a lot of big burly men carrying, all puffy chested because they support the 2nd Amendment and gaining the feeling that they are the thin line between order and chaos when crime acts before police do, and they carry single stack micro .380s, and it just blows my mind. It will get you out of a carjacking at knife point, but it may not get you out of a gunfight, or a mass shooting if it comes down to it, and the only cost to carry a better gun is discipline in consistent carry of a hefty gun and proper dress and gear to carry the gun comfortably. And with that you now have a much better fighting gun in the rare event something truly catastrophic goes down. I mean, what are the odds you'll be in any crime at all, period? and yet we still weigh that against not carrying a gun, and we carry the gun. It's just the next dimension of that philosophy.

Women and skinny college kids who don't eat enough and don't have the strength or comfort to lug around a P229 or XDM or something like that, yes, I'm for them carrying SOMETHING like a PM9 or a 642 since it's better than nothing, but the former guns are better for all tasks including the ones that are "less likely" if that statistic really matters. Couple that with other semantic benefits like draw speed and a more terrifying presence, as well as the very minute weight differences between polymer compacts/subcompacts among other things, I find carrying a fighting gun to be worth the cost if one can pay it (I'm talking to full grown men for the most part).


Basically, "guns should be comforting, not comfortable" and "carry the biggest gun you can" apply in my mind, and they are better than micro guns given higher versatility at the cost of carriers discipline and full usage of their capability, not minimalistic thinking and action, or, bluntly speaking, if you carry a gun to be a man, then man up and carry a big one.

[MT2008]

I'm very happy to see that we're having a much more constructive dialogue here than what I have seen previously. This is the type of conversation I think that gun owners need to have a little more often.

Originally Posted by commando552

The UK licensing system works here, but there are a couple of parts that would never be accepted in America. First and foremost is the fact that in the UK, self defence is not an acceptable reason to own a firearm which would make a lot of Americans very unhappy. Secondly, in the UK you need to obtain permission for each new firearm you want to acquire (with the exception of regular shotguns or antique weapons), and give justification for why you want it. There are a few other parts which I think the USA could benefit from adopting, such as the requirement that firearms are locked up with only the license holder having access to them, along with limits on the amount of ammunition that can be stored, or purchased in one transaction.

Agreed, self-defense should be regarded as a perfectly acceptable reason for owning a firearm. But in my opinion, someone who does carry a firearm for self-defense also requires a greater level of scrutiny than those who wish to own firearms for recreation or hunting. I would not, for example, be comfortable approving a conceal-carry permit for a senile old dude who thinks that every black guy walking down the street is casing his house for a robbery. And while I sympathize with a woman who gets raped and applies for a conceal-carry permit in order to defeat future would-be rapists, I would still wonder whether she was of sound mind to carry (because she might be a little too paranoid to be trusted with a weapon).

(Both of these examples are based on real people who I've actually known, though neither of them ever tried to get carry permits.)

Originally Posted by commando552

Any changes in legislation that come in the following months need to be well thought out and reasoned, and not the knee jerk over-reactions that followed Hungerford and Dunblane massacres.

I agree that the sort of kneejerk reactions that followed massacres in the U.K. are certainly NOT the type of reaction I want to see. I have said many times that bans should, as a rule of thumb, be considered one extreme that is to be avoided. But I think that it is possible to acknowledge that an AR-15 is a far more dangerous weapon than a bolt-action hunting rifle, while simultaneously arguing that a ban on AR-15s would be unnecessary.

Originally Posted by Yournamehere

I'm still not clear on the details of the shooting myself, but from what I heard A: he wasn't wearing body armor, and B: he didn't use his Bushmaster, just his pistols. If that's the case, then (even though in hysteria it doesn't matter) calling for an AWB in the wake of this shooting is really unfounded.

You are correct; it was indeed errant reporting. However, James Holmes was in fact wearing armor.

Originally Posted by Yournamehere

No matter what weapon he used, I don't necessarily agree that someone is useless in this situation with a concealed handgun. Outgunned, definitely, but it's reasonable to say that you can make up with a lack of firepower with proper tactics. I'm not saying it's easy, just that it's conceivably doable, especially if the CCW has a reasonable amount of training/skill, and the shooter doesn't. Yes this is semantic, but it seems to be the case in most respects.

Maybe "useless" is too strong a word, but I have trouble imagining that anyone who doesn't use guns for a living (i.e. a well-trained police officer, federal agent, or soldier) would be able to defeat a well-armed perp with only a handgun. That sounds more like something from a movie than real life. In real life, there are plenty of examples of BGs with assault weapons outgunning scores of police officers who had only handguns (i.e. North Hollywood, though obviously, those were illegally converted full-auto AKs and ARs).

That being said, if I were in a building where a mass killer was loose, I would definitely prefer to have some type of gun than none at all.

Originally Posted by Yournamehere

The other thing is the idea that mass shooters tend to quit at the first sign of resistance, because, again, they usually lack skill as well as coherence in the situation to understand that they can outgun a single person wielding a pistol with their rifle or whatever they are using, and just like in any other gunfight, they have to take in all this information at 200 miles an hour, where the shots are coming from, how many shots and with what, and given they're in a mass shooting solely to go out with a bang, they can come to the conclusion that they are beat (thats why they were there in the first place), and so they off themselves even if rationally they may have been able to win said gunfight against said concealed weapon holder.

Mass shooters may retreat when faced with resistance, but off themselves? The whole point of a mass killing is to get the highest possible body count, so I would expect a mass killer to retreat only so that he could survive long enough to kill more people. But simply give up completely and kill himself? I realize that the NRA has cited examples of shootings that were stopped by armed citizens, but is that really the norm?

You're also not taking into account the ways that mass killers might anticipate and try to mitigate this threat, like wearing body armor with trauma plates.

Also, recall that in Columbine, the two shooters exchanged gunfire with the school's security guard, and they didn't off themselves.

Originally Posted by Yournamehere

No, I don't think an AWB will do anything to prevent mass shootings, it will only serve to restrict law abiding gun owners.

If a new AWB were passed (politically impossible, even after Newtown), and ATF could somehow confiscate all of the assault weapons in private hands (physically impossible), it would certainly deprive mass killers of their weapons-of-choice, and it might make these incidents less deadly. It will always be easier to buy an AR-15 and some 100-round drums than to learn how to build a bomb. The question is whether these incidents will become less common.

Also, the fact is that there are too many AWs now in private hands for a ban to ever work. It might make them more expensive or harder to get, but it will never eliminate the threat completely. So from a practical point of view, there is no reason to deprive law-abiding gun owners of their rights. I do, however, believe that we should consider laws to reduce proliferation of AWs in the wrong hands.

Originally Posted by Yournamehere

Mag capacity is also not correlative to any of these crimes either, especially since VTech, the most violent shooting happened with nothing but 10 round mags. Granted it reduces reloads, practically speaking, giving people the chance to rush the shooter but rarely do shooters get rushed and taken down anyway (the Arizona shooting is an exception). And again, a ban isn't going to delete weapons or mags or bullets from existence (even if it could, we shouldn't want to be stripped of our great equalizers anyway) and just as well, a CW with as many rounds on tap as possible is a pawn for a pawn in that situation.

Yes, the VT shooter used 15-rounders in his Glock 19 (not 10-rounders; the AWB had expired by the time that incident took place). Obviously, it's possible to kill more people with lower magazine capacity. But that still doesn't mean that higher magazine capacity doesn't make it easier to shoot multiple victims in a short period of time. If there was no practical difference between ten 10-round magazines and one 100-round magazine, 100-round magazines wouldn't have been invented.

Originally Posted by Yournamehere

I agree with Matt frankly, you do consistently fail to use proper grammar or produce coherent thoughts or sentences, and it makes you seem uneducated and an easy target for those with whom you'd argue. I don't think he means to pick on you, he's just repressed the fair criticism to the point where it's just boiled over, and given the political climate at the time, we need both intelligent thinking and proper display of such to discuss these issues, that's all. It'd be worth it to either put the extra effort to make sure the voice you want heard is polished and coherent, or that you step aside from being a voice and do other things to benefit the collective cause.

Thank you for the support, though I still feel a need to respond to him anyway...