Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

Didn't see it mentioned but there was a woman arrested in connection with getting the NY shooter the guns. Don't know if it was straw purchase or if she worked at a gun store.

That was the straw purchaser. IIRC, his suicide note named her.
 
I'm not allowed to have pop-up headlights on a new car but I can enter a private sale and buy a semi-automatic rifle with no paperwork or background check or registration in 'Merica. The 2nd amendment lobby is so far up it's own ass it's ridiculous. Prudent regulation and proper consequences to support it. What is wrong with that?
As far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong here, only Vermont and Wyoming (and maybe Alaska?) allow unlicensed purchase of firearms. All other states require the buyer to present a license.


LeVeL, your friend is wrong in one thing - the 2nd amendment IS open for debate and interpretation - that's what those two supreme court cases that he cited are technically doing. The supreme court operates on precedents. As much as people like to claim that the constitution is set in stone, it is the supreme court's duty to re-read and re-interpret each of its provision on a case-to-case basis. The constitution is the foundation, but is not the ultimate, final decision making document.
Right, and those two supreme court cases fully backed the "gun nutter" interpretation of the 2A.


Really? If that is the case then how come I have to pay $500 to apply for a permit to simply have a gun in my home and have to provide record of every single summons aside from parking tickets (yep the form says that only the parking tickets are exempt so every speeding ticket I ever got would have to be considered).
Well, to be fair, NYC is one of the hardest places in the US to get a gun. In Vermont you can just... go buy one and start carrying.


So, how about enforcing the background check/application process more strictly and making tougher requirements. I push back on the second amendment because of its implications - ALL citizens have the right to bear arms. That implies that even mentally ill citizens have the right to bear arms. I've said it earlier in the thread - owning a weapon should be a responsibility and you should have to prove that you are capable and responsible to operate one. It can't just be a God-given right (the way that people treat it now).
Firearms ownership is already severely restricted in the US. You can't exactly walk into a gun store and just buy a gun. You have to pay (often hefty) fees to apply for a license ($100 in my case, plus another $100 for a mandatory safety course), twiddle your thumbs during the waiting period (best case scenario in Boston is 3 months if you're lucky), jump through all the hoops (I had to take an accuracy and safety test at the Boston Police shooting rage), pass background and mental health checks, submit forms for any firearms that you obtain once you get your (restricted) license... Hell, in NYC you have to pay $500 for the application. And then the police have the right to "inspect" your house to ensure that you are keeping your guns in a safe place! What 2A supporters are fighting right now is more restrictions, not just all restrictions.


If bombs are so effective and easy to obtain and use, why didn't all the shooters use bombs instead?
I often wonder that myself. Imagine if Jason Holmes walked into that movie theater and started throwing home-made Molotov cocktails... Eek...
 
As far as I know, and correct me if I'm wrong here, only Vermont and Wyoming (and maybe Alaska?) allow unlicensed purchase of firearms. All other states require the buyer to present a license.

Vermont, Arizona, Wyoming, and Alaska allow you to carry concealed without a permit. Most states do not require you to obtain a license prior to purchasing a firearm, and only require you to have a license if you are going to carry it in public.
 
Vermont, Arizona, Wyoming, and Alaska allow you to carry concealed without a permit. Most states do not require you to obtain a license prior to purchasing a firearm, and only require you to have a license if you are going to carry it in public.

Many states do have state background checks, and in all cases if you buy *anything* from a dealer new or used, you must undergo the Federal background check and all the Federal paperwork. In Texas, I can actually go into a store and about an hour later walk out with my shiny new firearm (assuming the store has any in stock at this point), having shown my ID (not a permit, just my ID), filled out the paperwork and gone through the Federal instant check. On the other hand, I can't do that in California - 10 day waiting period, full registration, etc., etc. Further, I can't legally buy a firearm from any state whose borders do not touch mine without going through a dealer - and I can't walk into a dealer in any other state and purchase anything because I don't live in those states and would be rejected. I can order it and have it sent to a dealer in my home state, but I cannot legally take possession there.

But I can also go down to the docks in Los Angeles and get an illegally imported AK-47 made in China that was never legally owned in the US and is fully automatic for $250. It's easier to buy a weapon that was never legally owned in many parts of the US than it is to get one legally.
 
Well, to be fair, NYC is one of the hardest places in the US to get a gun. In Vermont you can just... go buy one and start carrying.
Yep, probably strictest of all places where one could legally get a gun (tho I think DC and Chicago might be worse or on the same level) yet we still have a shitload of shootings... Point was more along the lines that you can't just say "In Murrica you can buy guns with a smile", it applies to a few states at most.

- - - Updated - - -

But I can also go down to the docks in Los Angeles and get an illegally imported AK-47 made in China that was never legally owned in the US and is fully automatic for $250. It's easier to buy a weapon that was never legally owned in many parts of the US than it is to get one legally.

Hell I could probably walk over to the projects right now (5 min walk at most) and get me an unlicensed/unregistered gun of just about any type.... Oh and some drugs too just so I can be nice and high when shooting random people...

Oh that reminds me some time ago we had someone killed there, some dude was playing around with a rifle on the roof, dude was never caught.... Yep gun restrictions totally stop people from using them....
Piers Morgan, owned:


He makes me proud to be a Hebrew!
 
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I often wonder that myself. Imagine if Jason Holmes walked into that movie theater and started throwing home-made Molotov cocktails... Eek...

I imagine because it's far easier to use readily-available firearms rather than making your own weapons. Less risky too, as can be seen by Spectre's stadium example.
 
All of the recent school shootings have occurred in places where you can't legally do that. CT and CA *require* that all sales go through a dealer, even private sales between individuals. That means that all persons wishing to own a gun must go through a background check and in some cases in CA (depends on what you're buying) there's even a 10 day waiting period. They have full registration of arms in those states. The 4473 paperwork is filed with the dealer and effectively with the Feds when the background check is performed.

So, one, you're wrong in the case of the recent school shooters and two, how did that work out again? Someone here has their head up an exhaust orifice but it's not the firearms owners.

To further point out your ignorance, you should know that pop-up headlights are NOT illegal in the US. They are still allowed under FMVSS. It was the European pedestrian safety standards along with makers trying to save money by making globally sellable cars that killed them off - that and the US allowing aerodynamic composite headlights, which are cheaper and easier to implement.

The point on the whole is that it is ridiculously easy to get firearms in America. Everyone in CA just goes to an AZ gun show to get a long gun. Guns are one of the few things that are under-regulated here. If the gun lobby would be somewhat less archaic and obtuse maybe we could implement a modern firearm database and be able to actually police the gun sellers in the states. I am a gun owner, so are most of my family and friends. Anyone who knows anything about guns knows the assault weapon ban is ridiculous and a semi-auto is just as catastrophic in most situations. There is nothing wrong with updating antiquated regulation and closing the interstate loopholes, perhaps even ramping up penalties on gun seller violations. Current regulation is convoluted and the lobby likes it that way.
 
The point on the whole is that it is ridiculously easy to get firearms in America. Everyone in CA just goes to an AZ gun show to get a long gun. Guns are one of the few things that are under-regulated here. If the gun lobby would be somewhat less archaic and obtuse maybe we could implement a modern firearm database and be able to actually police the gun sellers in the states. I am a gun owner, so are most of my family and friends. Anyone who knows anything about guns knows the assault weapon ban is ridiculous and a semi-auto is just as catastrophic in most situations. There is nothing wrong with updating antiquated regulation and closing the interstate loopholes, perhaps even ramping up penalties on gun seller violations. Current regulation is convoluted and the lobby likes it that way.
There is nothing wrong with streamlining the regulations and closing loopholes but the point(s) is(are) that it wouldn't do much to the overall crime rate as criminals tend to bypass all of these laws. It may curb some rampage style killings but that's still highly debatable as the Sandy Hook killer took legally obtained weapons from his mother or other people who make other types of weapons.
 
There is nothing wrong with streamlining the regulations and closing loopholes but the point(s) is(are) that it wouldn't do much to the overall crime rate as criminals tend to bypass all of these laws. It may curb some rampage style killings but that's still highly debatable as the Sandy Hook killer took legally obtained weapons from his mother or other people who make other types of weapons.

The question there is, would updated regulations have changed the situation of the Sandy Hooks weapons.
I believe to remember the perp had some mental issues - if updated regulations meant that his mom can not get weapons as easily, as many, or whatever change there is, because of his mental issues... then the situation may indeed have been different.
Without actually trying there is no way to know. People will of course say "sure, then he'd get his weapons elsewhere", but they're just as much guessing as those saying "no, if his mom didn't have those weapons he wouldn't have killed (as many?) people". Same problem on either side.
 
The question there is, would updated regulations have changed the situation of the Sandy Hooks weapons.
I believe to remember the perp had some mental issues - if updated regulations meant that his mom can not get weapons as easily, as many, or whatever change there is, because of his mental issues... then the situation may indeed have been different.
Without actually trying there is no way to know. People will of course say "sure, then he'd get his weapons elsewhere", but they're just as much guessing as those saying "no, if his mom didn't have those weapons he wouldn't have killed (as many?) people". Same problem on either side.
But then you have the flip side of taking away the person's ability to defend themselves only because someone in their household is mentally ill (and the definition is rather loose to begin with). Maybe a better solution in this case would have been an actual working mental health system where her son could have been committed to an institution for proper care (currently it's not easy).
 
As a random example, you could have restricted her to one gun. Enough for self-defence, but might have made his rampage cause fewer deaths.

Of course, the best solution would be to solve the problem (the illness) rather than working on reducing the symptoms (the rampage).
 
I have stayed out of this for various reasons some mentioned in that first post and some private. I haven't even read the majority of this thread but I can take a guess on where it has gone based on the volume of posts from various people.

You are never going to ban guns or handguns in the US and they shouldn't be banned.

These were my thoughts a few weeks ago. They haven't changed.

http://britishrover.wordpress.com/2...-to-pay-for-a-national-mental-health-program/

Tax Ammunition to Pay for a National Mental Health Program
Posted on December 20, 2012 by britishrover

I have been thinking about this a lot over the past few days but I am not going to try and parse things too much. I am probably barely going to edit this. I am just going to blow through a stream of thought and see what comes out. Just keep that in mind because for a tax policy proposal this is going to be light on math. I will throw some numbers out there but they are pulled out of memory and thin air excluding plus a couple of links I had bookmarked earlier.

I live about 30 or so minutes from Newtown. I have sold a couple of cars to people who live in the town including one to a teacher at the High School. I also went to Virginia Tech. I had classes in Norris Hall. My roommate for all but Freshman year spent his Freshman year in Ambler Johnston West. I had met both professors that died at Virginia Tech though I did not know any of the students as it happened four years after I left.

I grew up around guns. They were always locked up and I actually did not even know where my dad kept his guns but they were around. My dad didn?t hunt anymore after a close call deer hunting. Too many hunters and not enough deer. That doesn?t seem to be as much a problem anymore as the opposite is more the case. Uncles, grandfathers and cousins had guns though but they were always secured. I started shooting at 7, air rifles of course, a BB gun first then pellet rifles and pistols. I enjoyed shooting and I was good. Better then 20/20 vision and quick reflexes help. I sucked at baseball though so go figure.

I earned my Rifle merit badge in Boy Scouts but I never finished the Shotgun merit badge.

I started shooting pistols as a teenager and did some competition shooting. Mainly timed events with limited rounds. Fastest time to shoot five targets with six rounds for example. I was good at that to regularly beating grown men 20, 30 or 40 years my senior. I enjoy guns and I do not have a problem with them. I have a problem with how irresponsible as individuals and as a society we have become with guns. They need to be secured. Other common sense restrictions need to be enacted. Unstable individuals should have as close to zero access or opportunity as possible to obtain guns. There needs to be a way to identify these individuals ahead of time and there needs to be a treatment available for them. All of that will take money. Probably lots of money but there is a way to get that money.

This is my proposal. Tax ammunition to fund some sort of national mental health program. I want to tax guns too but ammunition should be included as well. Freedom Group alone, which is the largest small arms manufacturer in the US, sells some two billion rounds of ammunition a year so tax it and point the revenue stream at a problem that we are not addressing.

Go read this post I am Adam Lanza?s Mother and tell me we do not have a problem with mental health. Like the writer says no one wants to put a teenager in jail and that is not a solution to the problem. The status quo is not working and just enacting gun legislation that restricts certain types of firearms and their accessories is not going to be enough. You need a revenue stream to try and deal with mental health issues in disturbed children and young adults.

I have not thought out the details yet and as I said I am not going to through all the math right now but just roughing up some numbers I see something like this. Making things too complicated is bad but I think there should be a couple of different levels instead of just a flat percentage of the sale price.

Rim-fire ammunition is taxed at the lowest rate. This is almost exclusively .22 caliber rifle and pistol ammunition. Something like ten cents per 100 rounds seems right. Ammunition and firearms are currently taxed by the feds and that revenue is directed into wildlife conservation.

Higher calibers would be taxed at a higher rate and it would be a straight percentage of the sale price. Maybe there is a distinction between rifle rounds and pistol rounds but I am not sure. I would separate all shotgun ammunition at a slightly lower rate then rifle or pistol ammo. Add a separate tax on loose gun powder for handloaders.

I would also add in a mental health tax surcharge to all firearms purchases. Straight flat percentage of the sale price all pistols, rifles and shotguns. These do not need to be huge percentages to make a difference. If you read gun blogs or see crazy stuff posted by the NRA and its affiliates then there is stuff about increasing the tax on ammunition by 500 percent, 10,000 percent or some other astronomical percent and other such nonsense. Taxing anything at that rate would destroy the market for the product and dry up your revenue stream.

Freedom group alone has sales totaling over 670 million dollars just through September of this year. They will easily crack a billion dollars this year and that is just one company even if it is the largest one. Five percent of a billion dollars is $50 million. What sort of mental health program could you set up with that? The total dollar amount spent on firearms and ammunition is more then one billion dollars annually. Currently pistols and revolvers are taxed at 10 percent of the sale price will all other firearms and ammunition at 11 percent.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes are collected from those sales.

http://www.ttb.gov/statistics/final11.pdf

Tack a few more percent, plus the flat cents per XXX round on rim-fire ammunition, on to generate another hundred or so million and set up some innovative mental health care programs. Use some of the revenue stream for dedicated therapists in schools who would be trained to identify at risk students. I do not know much about mental health so I am not sure what the best types of programs would be but other there are people who can figure
 
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In that case, let us also tax all media and media playing equipment that reflects the cultural tendency to glorify violence, including news shows and video games. It's got just as much validity as a tax on ammo and firearms, would be easier to collect, easier to justify under the Constitution and would probably generate more money.

As a random example, you could have restricted her to one gun. Enough for self-defence, but might have made his rampage cause fewer deaths.

Of course, the best solution would be to solve the problem (the illness) rather than working on reducing the symptoms (the rampage).

One of the things we simply do not know yet is just how (or if) Lanza's mother secured her firearms (mostly because the police have not issued a statement on that just yet). If she had properly secured her weapons in a gun safe, it wouldn't have mattered if she had one or many firearms. According to the current police-released timeline, Lanza killed his father in New Jersey, traveled to his mother's home in Connecticut, killed his mother and then took her weapons. Then he traveled to the school bearing those weapons.

If she had her weapons in a safe and he killed her for the key, then used it, it wouldn't have made a difference if she just had one or multiple weapons in that safe. Lanza took at least four weapons - AR-15 type rifle made by Bushmaster, Saiga 12 shotgun (which was found in the trunk of his car - not used in the massacre) and the two pistols. Reports are still messed up (originally it was reported that he only used the pistols) but it appears he only used one weapon and that was the rifle. He also is now reported to have fired a few shots, then changed magazines (as most FPS games teach their players, in reflection of military technique) so a 30-round magazine ban would not have helped there. Also, none of the weapons found at the school site were used in the murders of his parents, reportedly, so they were all taken from his mother. (His father reportedly did not own firearms.)
 
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My problem with higher taxation of ammunition is that ammunition is already quite expensive. A 100-round box of not-so-good .38 at Wal-Mart costs $35 and it is actually a pretty good deal. It might sound like a lot of ammo but I went through that 100 shots in under an hour when practicing for my range test for my license. .357 and .45 are even more expensive than that and I'm not even getting into the bigger rarer calibers such as .50 (which is more like $4 per round, iirc).
 
My problem with higher taxation of ammunition is that ammunition is already quite expensive. A 100-round box of not-so-good .38 at Wal-Mart costs $35 and it is actually a pretty good deal. It might sound like a lot of ammo but I went through that 100 shots in under an hour when practicing for my range test for my license. .357 and .45 are even more expensive than that and I'm not even getting into the bigger rarer calibers such as .50 (which is more like $4 per round, iirc).

I actually have no problem with a tax on ammo as long as we also tax the media, media players/displays, etc., etc., at the same percentage rate as the heaviest firearms taxes. Not the same dollar rate, the same percentage rate. Make $100K in ad revenue from your news broadcast enshrining the latest spree killer? Well, the (just pulling it out of the air) tax on ammo is 100%, so your broadcast company now needs to pay $100K in taxes. Release a game that promotes violence? 100% tax on the game AND the player. Make a music video saying things like "shoot the cops?" - guess what, you get to pay up.

No, the media is not causing this. But guns aren't causing it either and taxing one is just as valid as taxing the other.
 
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I could get behind a tax on violent media even if the relationship between violent media consumption and violence is weak at best and spurious at worst. I did say I would be open to other revenue streams for the mental health plan.

Per capita we do not spend nearly as much money on violent video games as say S. Korea or Japan but have a much higher violent crime rate overall.

And your 100% pulling it out of the air tax rate on Ammo is not you pulling it out of the air. It is feeding into the same ridiculous rhetoric that I read about in the past about multiple 100% taxes on ammo or guns in the run up to Obama's first and second election. I see something like a maximum ten to fifteen percent tax on top of current taxes for firearms and ammunition. That puts the total maximum rate at something like twenty percent or twenty-six percent.

I am not even locked into using caliber as a way to separate tax rates I just thought of it is as an easy way to do it. I still prefer the idea of setting aside all rim-fire ammunition at a much lower rate. Something in the pennies per 100 or 250 round block range.

Also fixed links in first post.
 
As a random example, you could have restricted her to one gun. Enough for self-defence, but might have made his rampage cause fewer deaths.

Of course, the best solution would be to solve the problem (the illness) rather than working on reducing the symptoms (the rampage).

That's like restricting someone to only have one car or one house - a major rights infringement. Also a single gun with 20 mags is really the same as 2 guns with 10 clips each, so I kind of doubt a single gun ls less deadly...
 
That's like restricting someone to only have one car or one house - a major rights infringement. Also a single gun with 20 mags is really the same as 2 guns with 10 clips each, so I kind of doubt a single gun ls less deadly...

Whether that would actually have reduced the severity of the rampage, I have no idea. However I believe he did carry multiple weapons, and reason tells me that having fewer weapons is at most as deadly as having more weapons. After all, if fewer weapons were better you might as well just drop the excess weapons to gain lethality.

On the contrary, if you say a single gun is as deadly, a single gun suffices for self defence. Hence the mom would not lose any self-defendability.


Of course that would be a limitation of privilege. However, it's less limitation than stopping her from getting guns at all due to having a person with mental problems in the house. Personally I prefer the latter over the former. If there is a nutcase in the house there should not be firearms in the house. That may apply to other things as well, not just firearms, if you as a relative want to keep undue harm from yourself and the person with mental problems.
 
Whether that would actually have reduced the severity of the rampage, I have no idea. However I believe he did carry multiple weapons, and reason tells me that having fewer weapons is at most as deadly as having more weapons. After all, if fewer weapons were better you might as well just drop the excess weapons to gain lethality.

On the contrary, if you say a single gun is as deadly, a single gun suffices for self defence. Hence the mom would not lose any self-defendability.
The only limitation is number of rounds available, if he were planning on say killing a 100 people he would need at minimum a 100 rounds but only had say 40 for each handgun and 30 for the rifle he would bring all of them. If the mother was only allowed a single weapon she would likely have kept a larger stock of ammo (or he would buy extra ammo before going out) so it's a moot point really.

Of course that would be a limitation of privilege. However, it's less limitation than stopping her from getting guns at all due to having a person with mental problems in the house. Personally I prefer the latter over the former. If there is a nutcase in the house there should not be firearms in the house. That may apply to other things as well, not just firearms, if you as a relative want to keep undue harm from yourself and the person with mental problems.
What if your neighbors have severe mental problems? What about a relative that doesn't live with you but stay over from time to time? What if you got a friend who hangs out at the house a lot and is a little touched? You are basically talking about stripping people away of their rights (as of current legislation firearm ownership is a right not a privilege) for very dubious benefits.
 
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