admiral's iq is wasted on these forums...

They did - for the most part the US Constitution imagines that almost any white man (again we're talking constitution as it was at the time it was written) would also be a self-supplied soldier whenever the need arose. That is true for a lot of our history (at least through the US Civil War ending in 1865) where a large proportion of soldiers had all or at least some of their own equipment - and it's still a tradition in the Marines where each soldier must individually buy every piece of their uniform - and even in other services soldiers are expected to buy or at least *can* buy various pieces of equipment for use on their own. Though those typically don't apply to firearms (as those are government issue).

As a result it is also legal (but not easy) to buy large calibur AT guns, and even tanks themselves. Though one major limitation is that civilian air craft aren't allowed to break the sound barrier so you can buy a mig-15 but it's illegal to take it super-sonic without special permission nor can one equip it with missiles.

wtf why did I even buy one if I can't put missiles on it my weekend is ruined

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you also aren't familiar with the very basic tenants of a good argument

I'm not sure if a relative who went there on vacation is affected or not yet :/.

That said it annoys the hell out of me when people use arguments like "YEAH IM SURE THIS GUY WOULD REALLY FOLLOW YOUR NEW GUN LAWS" as a counter-argument to gun control though.

What's the point in having any law then - every single law we have is broken by someone, at some point after all? Obvious answer is laws (and the punishment from them) are a deterrent, without them even more people would commit immoral acts, whether that be murder, stealing, rape, etc.

While 100% reduced gun related deaths would be awesome, that's not what anyone is banking on really when they want to push stricter gun control laws...just a significant reduction of some sort. It's more difficult to perform here because of the 2nd amendment and the sheer amount of guns that exist, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work on it in some manner (including stuff that on the side affects it like legalizing marijuana reducing violent crime).

Thing is, a lot of violent crime is committed in the heat of the moment, and a lot of would be criminals are lazy to an extent - they won't go through with something all the way if the work required to get there is too high. Automatics are already very difficult/expensive to acquire here, imagine if semi-autos were as well - sure a group of criminals would still acquire them and kill people, but it'd be a substantially smaller amount than current. Restricting people to stuff like small firearms would substantially reduce the amount events like this would happen since stuff like pistols can't exactly easily injure/kill 500+ people in an extremely short time frame. Maybe it wouldn't have curbed this event in particular, but it could have helped curb other events this year or last year, etc. You just have to make acquiring something such an expensive/difficult task that most people get lazy and give up on doing it, or if they do still go through with a crime they aren't as well equipped.

Australia implemented a bunch of measures after Port Arthur that helped lead to a reduction of ~60% in gun related homicide and (sometimes forgotten in gun control arguments) suicide. That's not 100% but that's a lot. ~11,686 people have been reported to die from guns this year alone in the US, if we had a 60% reduction in gun related deaths then 7,120 people would still be alive right now - and that's not including the curbing of our annual ~22,000 gun related suicides.

I'm not saying we can up and go do exactly what Australia did, I don't think the US could ever implement the type of stuff Australia did wholesale especially with the sheer amount of guns we have (they spent like half a billion to buy and destroy like 600k guns and we like 5 times that amount), but I think it highlights how foolish that argument is as strong gun control laws *very objectively* curb gun related homicide & suicide on a significant scale considering other countries with stronger gun control laws have nowhere near this level of problem .

Even if we could put forward laws that would reduce gun related death by even just 20-25% and make mass shootings significantly more difficult, it'd be great for the country.

Anyways, this was pretty depressing to find out about last night and I hope those posting here who have family or friends in the area wind up not being affected by this. :c

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http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/country-music-guitarist-vegas-shooting-survivor-reversed-gun/story?id=50240355

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All of these articles generally say that some/the majority of the guns were legal? none mention the specific machine gun which was used which i can understand would probably be hard to find out when there were 40 or so guns.

The part where it said he passed mental checks is quite interesting, not sure what the context of it is but i'm sure that it will become evident as the investigation continues, if there is one aspect of gun control i agree with, it would be mandatory background checks.

Thanks for giving a sourced response above insults like the last one, goes a long way.

I probably should have made it clearer that i agree with controlling of guns which are absurdly beyond a hobby or usage other than murder.

Admittedly, i posted under the assumption that most people on the thread thought guns should be banned in general, which was unfair now i look back on it.

Regardless of what anybody really thinks here, i'm sure everyone can agree it was an absolute tragedy.

i dont see why you need drugs. outside of a few medical cases there isnt a reason to have drugs. good thing we banned them, and no one gets their hands on them anymore

There's a very good reason Americans should want absolute psychopaths not owning guns (or cars).

what is the logical conclusion of this argument? that no laws should exist because people will just break them anyway? common sense gun law works in nearly every other first world country in the world to reduce gun deaths and violent crime in general.

Hold up. The registration system is still a paper one? In 2017? The actual fuck.

Many of those laws in other countries work because guns are not as widespread as they are in the US. That means the laws you are referring to have no practical application in the United States and are a waste of time.

I have yet to see a proposed law that would hurt the "bad people" with guns more than the "good people" with guns. That is why there is such resistance to any new gun laws in this country. There is no reason to penalize guys like me because some fucking nut-job wants to shoot into a crowd of people randomly.

I don't think any good guy would need 50 guns

no civilian needs any type of rifle, period. my safety > your bitch ass hobby

If anyone is interested in helping the victims and families financially

https://www.gofundme.com/dr2ks2-las-vegas-victims-fund

Actually scratch the gun thing, the bigger issue here is that people are having to pay for the right to get treated after being shot...

amen

I want to give a giant shout out to all the every day people, off duty medical professionals and other people in the crowd who thought quickly, helped those who they could, commandeered vehicles and drove hundreds of people to the hospital and rendered first aid. These incidents give me so much hope and love for the human race because there was one shooter, but there were dozens or more people willing to risk their own lives to render aid to complete strangers in their time of need. I'm supposed to say that bypassing the triage system and just rushing that number of people into the hospital isn't the right move, but the important point is that they tried and did their best to help with the knowledge and abilities they had. That is the solidarity that we should be focusing on.

I also want to thank the hard working police, fire, EMT, paramedic, nurse, doctor and other hospital staff colleagues who did they best they could and saved countless lives. Las Vegas has 1 level 1 trauma center and they performed on a level that my own city (which has 3) would be envious of.

I may be talking out of my ass here, but isn't the dichotomy between 'good guys with guns' and 'bad guys with guns' at the heart of the American gun control debate a complete logical fallacy (not to mention an infantile way to talk about the issue)? Most US gun deaths are suicides, and a large number of those deaths wouldn't happen if these guys didn't have guns (see the ubiquitous anecdote about suicides in England after getting rid of coal gas). And take the person at the center of this mass shooting - until he did what he did, he wasn't a 'bad guy' by most standards, he became one when he killed dozens of people. We rightly regard physiognomy and dissection of criminals' brains as pseudoscience today, so if you can only tell who is a 'bad guy' after they've already shot somebody, how can you pretend to have any way of implementing a system that separates the wheat from the chaff consistently?

ppl are a lot less likely to kill each other if its harder to kill ppl. guns make it a lot easier to kill ppl. the results should be obvious. as far as regulating guns in a country that has 300+ million of them, thats gonna be rly hard.

Looking at the history of guns, stronger restrictions have been placed on the purchase, modification, ammunition, and safety accessories (yes safety accessories) time and time again which only prove to be futile. If you really think that a teenager can waltz on into Walmart and buy a gun off the shelf and kill 12 children the next day you are very mistaken.

??? Semi-automatic rifles are absolutely suited for hunting (semi-auto is not full-auto). Also, the framers of the Constitution didn't guarantee the right to bear arms for self-preservation only, they did it because their ability to contest the British military is what gained them their liberty in the first place, and should the U.S. ever become tyrannical, they want the ability to fight back. Also it is insulting to the framers to assume they didn't account for an advancing technology, in fact that's exactly what they did account for: they want the people to be able to topple a tyrannical government.

Once again, you have to consider the circumstances of arguing for gun laws in the United States. The United States is vastly different in culture than every other first world country, and there are also ~300 million guns floating around already, so regulating them significantly or removing them at all would prove a logistical impossibility, especially coupled with the fact that there are people who would rather die than give up their guns.

You raise a good point at the latter part of your post, but do keep in mind the countless times ccw has saved both lives and property. A better way to tackle suicide is not to tackle methods of suicide, but tackle mental health, and fix the many contributing factors to suicide(i.e, this is where your debates about healthcare, the economy, education will fall).

"Man, if only those people in the crowd had guns on them, they could have shot up at the guy 32 floors above in the middle of the night and ended all of this."

In all seriousness, RIP to the victims and fuck this country's obsession with guns. Mass shootings will unfortunately continue to happen, and laws won't change due to the insane amount of special interest money in government.

Unfortunately the venue for the concert had a no-firearm policy, so they couldn't use guns. (not that it would've helped). The guy went into the 32nd story of a hotel and essentially shot fish in a barrel because the hotel overlooking hundreds of people had no security.

yeah you're right that if nothing changes this will just happen again but, i just think it's kind of pointless because everything about the gun control debate has already been said before. the same back and forth debate between people who support stricter carrying laws and people who don't happens every single time a mass shooting happens and it's the same debate every time. i probably could of worded that a whole lot better and i honestly don't want to be limiting of what people say because that's a really shitty thing to do but saying you guys shouldn't be allowed to debate about gun control wasn't my point. my point was it's kind of hard to make any real profound difference regarding the gun control debate when everything about it has been said before countless times, so rather than focus on that we should probably be helping the victims effected, which is why my original post before this was linking to a bunch of places where you could help the victims.

maybe i'm wrong idk i just want to help people i wasn't trying to be an ass, sorry.

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