so what would you say happened June 6th 2017? certainly not a mass shooting... what makes it mass?
after that incident, Police said they had stopped 12 similar attacks based on intelligence since September 2014.
But what exactly is enough? Unless we have a solution to this horrendous problem, the current state of affairs will not subside.
Just shouting “ban assult rifles” will not solve the problem. We need an elaborte plan reasoned by principle rather than by analogy.
If people aren't within weapons range of each other they can't shoot each other. So force everyone to stay a mile away from everyone else, and increase the range until the problem goes away.
The right would say this wouldn't be a problem if more people had guns to defend themselves with. An idiotic argument for sure especially given the details of this current attack (32 stories up... far away, etc).
Even if this happened at an NRA rally or gun show they'd come up with some other excuse.
There isn't an easy solution for this type of thing. They will keep happening no matter what you do to try and stop them.
Gun control will probably help halt the ones that happen as an impulsive action, but there's no regulation that will stop a terrorist from achieving their goal.
That's why I mentioned gun control. This won't stop everybody though. Here in the Netherlands we have tight gun control and we still had a mass shooting with licensed guns. Also, we've seen many attacks in Europe recently with illegally imported guns.
The top five most viable "somethings" have already been discussed and ruled out, so what exactly is left?
It's a tragedy, but it's a repeating tragedy, and this thread will follow the same pattern as all previous US mass shooting discussion threads where people will oppose solutions without any viable alternatives.
It's said that mass shootings have more to due with media hype giving rise to copycats over the generations. If mass shootings were not 'national' news, but confined to the areas of people they actually affected then we would have much fewer of them.
Here's my attempt at a rational explanation. Feel free to point out flaws.
> No, the real problem is mass shootings.
I think we should talk about mass killings not mass shootings.
Yes US has had a lot of mass shootings but it seems you have avoided the concentration camps and the Srebrenica etc that Europe has experienced during the last hundred years.
When people don’t have guns it is much easier to round them up and kill them.
Most people who have got killed seems to have been killed by their own authorities or invaders, not neighbours.
My point is that maybe we shouldn't see this in isolation.
Paying insurance is stupid - until your house burns down.
Guns for every law abiding citizen that wants one (and paying a few lives every year) is stupid until your uncles, brothers and sons are marched out in the woods and shot.
This happened less than 30 years ago way to close to me.
What I wish NRA would do though is fighting for stricter rules for gun storage, teaching risk assessment (do you really need your loaded handgun to be available for your kids?) etc.
Before people misunderstand, I'm not saying we should get rid of all guns or anything like that. They do have plenty of legitimate uses. What I'm saying is that the NRA specifically represents terrorists better than they represent most gun owners. Their absolutist position, rejecting any and all restrictions on guns and ammunition, is not representative of most gun owners. All it has done, over and over, is to enable the worst kinds of crazies to bring unreasonable amounts of firepower to places where it doesn't belong. For example, it should be practically impossible to bring eight long weapons and hundreds of rounds into a hotel unless you can prove you're military or law enforcement. Where, short of that, should one draw the line? That's a reasonable discussion to have, but it can't occur as long as the NRA gets a seat - and the most influential one at that - at the table. They need to be shut out, so that reasonable people can get on with reasonable discussion about how to stop these atrocities.
The NRA represents their membership, not all gun-owners everywhere.
> it should be practically impossible to bring eight long weapons and hundreds of rounds
How would one make it 'practically impossible'? I think most people agree that we would like to ensure day-to-day safety, but the disagreement is "at what cost"?
The NRA defends against removing a constitutional protection against tyranny, simply because < 0.01% of our population is made up of madmen who might access weaponry.
(1) His weapons should have been inspected on entry to the hotel, to ensure not only legality but condition and unloaded state as well. In this case, that would have resulted in them being flagged as illegal full-auto conversions.
(2) Ammunition should have been stored separately, in the lobby or the basement, in total accordance with what responsible gun owners already recognize as best practice.
With these two measures in place, he might have been able to do some damage, but a semi-auto and one magazine would not have led to the kind of result we actually saw.
> The NRA defends against removing a constitutional protection against tyranny
The NRA does no such thing. The measures they support or oppose would make no difference if the day ever came when we needed to defend against tyrants commanding a military with modern weapons and training. If you look at the paramilitaries that the NRA enables, it would even be fair to say that they're promoting the tools of tyranny.
Have you ever traveled to another country? It might change your perspective on what's feasible and what's not. It's politically infeasible here because of groups like the NRA, but it's perfectly feasible in terms of logistics and any normal perception of rights. Remember, hotels are private property. Any owner of private property should have the right to exclude or limit dangerous items on that property. Any reasonable owner of a high-rise hotel might exercise that right, and any who don't could be considered accessories to acts like these.
Yes, I travelled a bit, I'm French living in the US.
Let's say that they prohibit it (some establishments do), without proper security screening, it would be easy to sneak anything in if you want to.
The cost to implement this type of security seems too high (hardware + employees). The public may also reject that, the TSA is quite infamous in the US.
Have you been in any country that has this type of security in their hotels?
> Have you been in any country that has this type of security in their hotels?
Yes. It's common in India, though TBH the staff don't always seem to be paying that much attention.
This is really all about priorities. If putting an end to this endless blood tide were a priority, we absolutely could take measures that would help. We could even do so without violating essential rights. There's a reasonable debate to be had about what measures we can or should tolerate, but screaming "it's infeasible!" denies such debate. It assumes one conclusion, and doesn't even allow consideration of another.
> If any of you want to stop a blood tide start with the cars.
Which are already regulated more than guns are. It would be great if we were allowed to make the same kind of rational choices about guns that we make about cars. Thanks for bringing that up.
> Or maybe join the NRA as a safety instructor. Argue for gun safes and mandatory training for young gun owners.
Oh right, I should join an organization whose policy agenda I despise, and spend my own time doing something that would have no effect on people like yesterday's shooter instead of advocating for measures that might. So glad I have you to tell me how I should spend my time. Or was that just deflection, to prevent a discussion that might lead to a conclusion you don't like?
> instead of write you off as a gungrabber
I can't control whether someone someone can write me off as a "gungrabber" (telling phrase BTW) even after I explicitly said that I don't want to take away everyone's guns and that they have plenty of legitimate uses. That's up to them and their psychiatrists.
That makes a lot of assumptions about the motives behind the people pushing for those measures which allegedly help. Your comment was absolutely on point regarding cars, but that was deflected in the response.
Without trivializing the grief surrounding the victims here, it really is as simple as that.
Tragic, but apparently as American as apple pie. And honestly, that's the bigger (moral) tragedy here, which is depressing enough that I don't even want to think about it.
We need to fall to this matter yarely, else we are unraveld. Such acts of terror are not bound by: “ type of weapon”, “nationality”, “circumstances”, etc. Instead of aiming our efforts and resources at the “wrong solutions”, I belive we need to ask first the right questions. We need to boil things down to its most fundamental truths, and reason up from there.
Social engineer here. As a 64yo retired accountant with no military experience, terrorist connection or even police record, Stephen Paddock makes a most unconvincing suspect.
All the false/diversive phonecalls (which is the primary causal factor of the high kill count) and ten ($20,000+) automatic weapons are much more suspicious than any possible motives regarding the 2012 property liability suit against Cosmopolitan Resorts or ongoing divorce. The only other relevant information are a 2003 single engine pilots license and an Alaska hunting license. Again, both unconvincing. I'm left wondering who made all the diversive calls?
43 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 29.9 ms ] threadAll it takes is one dangerous idiot and/or fanatic.
Even if this happened at an NRA rally or gun show they'd come up with some other excuse.
Gun control will probably help halt the ones that happen as an impulsive action, but there's no regulation that will stop a terrorist from achieving their goal.
Clearly there is since there's only one "civilised" country that experiences anywhere near this order of magnitude of mass shootings.
The key word here though is "a". The US is on 273 this year alone.
http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
It's a tragedy, but it's a repeating tragedy, and this thread will follow the same pattern as all previous US mass shooting discussion threads where people will oppose solutions without any viable alternatives.
A congressman got non-fatally shot a few months ago and nothing was done, so the barrier for inaction is really high: https://thinkprogress.org/shooting-congressional-baseball-pr...
> No, the real problem is mass shootings.
I think we should talk about mass killings not mass shootings.
Yes US has had a lot of mass shootings but it seems you have avoided the concentration camps and the Srebrenica etc that Europe has experienced during the last hundred years.
When people don’t have guns it is much easier to round them up and kill them.
Most people who have got killed seems to have been killed by their own authorities or invaders, not neighbours.
I'd rather talk about mass shootings—which is a problem that America currently has—instead of mass killings, which is not.
Paying insurance is stupid - until your house burns down.
Guns for every law abiding citizen that wants one (and paying a few lives every year) is stupid until your uncles, brothers and sons are marched out in the woods and shot.
This happened less than 30 years ago way to close to me.
What I wish NRA would do though is fighting for stricter rules for gun storage, teaching risk assessment (do you really need your loaded handgun to be available for your kids?) etc.
Before people misunderstand, I'm not saying we should get rid of all guns or anything like that. They do have plenty of legitimate uses. What I'm saying is that the NRA specifically represents terrorists better than they represent most gun owners. Their absolutist position, rejecting any and all restrictions on guns and ammunition, is not representative of most gun owners. All it has done, over and over, is to enable the worst kinds of crazies to bring unreasonable amounts of firepower to places where it doesn't belong. For example, it should be practically impossible to bring eight long weapons and hundreds of rounds into a hotel unless you can prove you're military or law enforcement. Where, short of that, should one draw the line? That's a reasonable discussion to have, but it can't occur as long as the NRA gets a seat - and the most influential one at that - at the table. They need to be shut out, so that reasonable people can get on with reasonable discussion about how to stop these atrocities.
> it should be practically impossible to bring eight long weapons and hundreds of rounds
How would one make it 'practically impossible'? I think most people agree that we would like to ensure day-to-day safety, but the disagreement is "at what cost"?
The NRA defends against removing a constitutional protection against tyranny, simply because < 0.01% of our population is made up of madmen who might access weaponry.
I can think of two fairly simple measures.
(1) His weapons should have been inspected on entry to the hotel, to ensure not only legality but condition and unloaded state as well. In this case, that would have resulted in them being flagged as illegal full-auto conversions.
(2) Ammunition should have been stored separately, in the lobby or the basement, in total accordance with what responsible gun owners already recognize as best practice.
With these two measures in place, he might have been able to do some damage, but a semi-auto and one magazine would not have led to the kind of result we actually saw.
> The NRA defends against removing a constitutional protection against tyranny
The NRA does no such thing. The measures they support or oppose would make no difference if the day ever came when we needed to defend against tyrants commanding a military with modern weapons and training. If you look at the paramilitaries that the NRA enables, it would even be fair to say that they're promoting the tools of tyranny.
Let's say that they prohibit it (some establishments do), without proper security screening, it would be easy to sneak anything in if you want to. The cost to implement this type of security seems too high (hardware + employees). The public may also reject that, the TSA is quite infamous in the US.
Have you been in any country that has this type of security in their hotels?
Yes. It's common in India, though TBH the staff don't always seem to be paying that much attention.
This is really all about priorities. If putting an end to this endless blood tide were a priority, we absolutely could take measures that would help. We could even do so without violating essential rights. There's a reasonable debate to be had about what measures we can or should tolerate, but screaming "it's infeasible!" denies such debate. It assumes one conclusion, and doesn't even allow consideration of another.
Or maybe join the NRA as a safety instructor. Argue for gun safes and mandatory training for young gun owners.
That way you can actually reduce suffering since there is a possibility that someone will listen instead of write you off as a gungrabber.
That way you can save even more lives.
Which are already regulated more than guns are. It would be great if we were allowed to make the same kind of rational choices about guns that we make about cars. Thanks for bringing that up.
> Or maybe join the NRA as a safety instructor. Argue for gun safes and mandatory training for young gun owners.
Oh right, I should join an organization whose policy agenda I despise, and spend my own time doing something that would have no effect on people like yesterday's shooter instead of advocating for measures that might. So glad I have you to tell me how I should spend my time. Or was that just deflection, to prevent a discussion that might lead to a conclusion you don't like?
> instead of write you off as a gungrabber
I can't control whether someone someone can write me off as a "gungrabber" (telling phrase BTW) even after I explicitly said that I don't want to take away everyone's guns and that they have plenty of legitimate uses. That's up to them and their psychiatrists.
The idea of a right to armed revolution is the whole problem. This is indistinguishable from terrorism.
That's how I understood it anyway.
Terrorism is well defined and NRA for all it's flaws is not a terrorist organization.
Tragic, but apparently as American as apple pie. And honestly, that's the bigger (moral) tragedy here, which is depressing enough that I don't even want to think about it.
(Like usual, though, I knew how to get here via search, since I knew the discussion would exist despite being flagged off the home page.)