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"Gun Cult in the US and How to Change It" split from Las Vegas Massacre

Loachman

Former Army Pilot in Drag
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Bird_Gunner45 said:
I have previously shown numerous statistics that show that the instrument does matter. The terrorist attack in New York killed 8 with a truck. If he had a semi-automatic rifle he could have killed 26, like this idiot did, or 58 like the last one. Your argument absolutely does not hold up under any scrutiny.

If he had a 19-ton cargo truck he could have killed 86 people and injured 458 others, as happened in Nice on 14 July 2016.

If he had a rented truck and 7000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, acetylene, nitromethane, diesel fuel, and explosives stolen from a quarry he could have killed 168 people and injured over 680 others - and caused over $650 million in property damage to over 300 buildings destroyed or damaged - as happened in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1955.

If he had an airline ticket and a boxcutter...

No gun? No problem.

Your argument absolutely does not hold up under any scrutiny.
 
You don't need a bump stock to make an AR, or other semi auto fire like that. You need a belt loop on the pants your wearing.
 
It's old, but makes BG45 point. Take away the instrument and things will be all hunky dory.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/25/tokyo-knife-attack-stabbing-sagamihara
 
Loachman said:
If he had a 19-ton cargo truck he could have killed 86 people and injured 458 others, as happened in Nice on 14 July 2016.

If he had a rented truck and 7000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, acetylene, nitromethane, diesel fuel, and explosives stolen from a quarry he could have killed 168 people and injured over 680 others - and caused over $650 million in property damage to over 300 buildings destroyed or damaged - as happened in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1955.

If he had an airline ticket and a boxcutter...

No gun? No problem.

Your argument absolutely does not hold up under any scrutiny.

It does hold up and for the reasons noted. Easy access to semi-automatic rifles has repeatedly been shown to have exacerbated situations involving mass killings. That a 65 year old could take out the equivalent of 2 PPCLI in a few minutes should be cause for consideration.

Yes, other weapons have been used, such as the truck in Nice. They are the exception, whereas the use of semi-automatic rifles in mass killings is vastly more common.
 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/25/tokyo-knife-attack-stabbing-sagamihara

We had a thread on Milnet.ca regarding that incident, in case anyone is interested.

It was a care home for disabled people. All were mentally disabled, and many had physical disabilities as well. They were attacked at night in their beds.

It was the worst mass assault in Japan since World War Two.

Trivia: Sagamihara is Toronto's sister city.


 
mariomike said:
It was a care home for disabled people. All were mentally disabled, and many had physical disabilities as well. They were stabbed at night in their beds.

It was the worst mass assault in Japan since World War Two.

Trivia: Sagamihara is Toronto's sister city.
So, you think the condition of the victims was the cause? Knives are favourite weapons in attacks where guns are hard to obtain. I don't have stats handy, but I'll bet more get killed, around the world, with knives than get shot with illegal guns.

Hospital, church, old age home, mall or school. It really makes no difference what kind of people were killed. Old, young, infirm or soldiers (Ft Hood). It is the person doing the harm that is at fault. That is why they pick these places. No gun zones full of people without protection.

BTW, ask any cop. Guys with knives are crazy dangerous, capable of cutting a lot of people up in a hurry, including armed police. http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshh44oh9wTL1t11XJKD

The fact that they were old and infirm means nothing to the discussion.
 
recceguy said:
So, you think the condition of the victims was the cause? Knives are favourite weapons in attacks where guns are hard to obtain. I don't have stats handy, but I'll bet more get killed, around the world, with knives than get shot with illegal guns.

Hospital, church, old age home, mall or school. It really makes no difference what kind of people were killed. Old, young, infirm or soldiers (Ft Hood). It is the person doing the harm that is at fault. That is why they pick these places. No gun zones full of people without protection.

BTW, ask any cop. Guys with knives are crazy dangerous, capable of cutting a lot of people up in a hurry, including armed police. http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshh44oh9wTL1t11XJKD

The fact that they were old and infirm means nothing to the discussion.

More people are killed with guns than knives in the US.

https://www.snopes.com/four-times-more-stabbed-than-rifles-any-kind/
 
Since the mass murder in Sagamihara, Japan (Reply #85 ) was brought up, this article discusses,
"Why are mass murders so uncommon in Japan?"
https://qz.com/742140/why-are-mass-murders-so-uncommon-in-japan/
 
Loachman said:
If he had a rented truck and 7000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, acetylene, nitromethane, diesel fuel, and explosives stolen from a quarry he could have killed 168 people and injured over 680 others - and caused over $650 million in property damage to over 300 buildings destroyed or damaged - as happened in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1955.

If he had an airline ticket and a boxcutter...
Are you suggesting we should apply the aimilar controls to firearms as were applied to box cutters on aircraft, or to ammonium nitrate fertilizer in general?  Or would you settle for the licensing, registration, and insurance requirements that accompany automobiles?
 
One can own as many vehicles as one wants and can afford with no licence, registration or insurance required. Those are only necessary if one wishes to drive on public roads. I'd be quite happy if my PAL permitted me to use a network of public ranges whenever I chose, and not as government permission to continue to own lawfully-acquired devices on my own property without being liable for lengthy prison sentences.

Regarding insurance, I can get $5,000,000 worth of insurance, which covers all legal firearms activities, for only $9.95 annually. Insurance companies are professional risk assessors, so that's a pretty good indication of the relative risk between firearm and vehicle use.

Nobody calls for vehicle bans or restrictions or confiscations following vehicular mass-murders, or limits to fuel tank size, or governors to reduce maximum speeds. Nobody calls for restrictions on alcohol purchases following drunk-driving deaths. The emphasis there is placed upon the human(s) at fault, not the machine or intoxicant. Nobody calls for the innocent to be treated as if they were all potential murderers or drunk drivers.

So, yes, in that regard, treat firearms like vehicles and I'd be ecstatic.
 
Bird_Gunner45 said:
More people are killed with guns than knives in the US.

https://www.snopes.com/four-times-more-stabbed-than-rifles-any-kind/

You're right, and among those more Americans are murdered with hammers than all rifle types combined.


Question for you (or anyone else). Suppose tomorrow all semi-automatic rifles are destroyed in North America. For debate sake both lawful owners and criminals alike no longer possess semi-auto rifles, none will be made in North America and none will be shipped in. 

The next time there is a mass shooting with, say, a bolt action rifle or pump action shotgun should we celebrate that maybe only 9 died instead of 19? Is that the driving force behind banning semi-auto rifles? To lower the number of deaths in mass shootings?  (no one seems concerned about 9000 Americans a year are killed with pistols instead of some 350 with a rifle.)

Is it the semi-automatics rate of fire why they should be banned? While I agree it's generally high, bolt actions can be fired pretty quick too.  Look at this fellow with a WW1 bolt action rifle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_a7pXWi6xo
I believe you can buy kits to make their magazines detachable. My bolt action has a 10 round detachable magazine, 20" barrel and folding stock. Like an assault bolt action  ;D

What happens in my example where semi-automatics are now non-existent and someone shoots 9 or 10 or 12 people with a bolt action rifle? What if the shooter had 3 or 4 of those 10 round bolt action rifles? Do we just agree that stuff like that happens since we reached a balanced gun control position or do we now look at limiting bolt actions somehow? 

Similar videos with break open shotguns and revolvers. This video is a bit of an exaggeration by an expert for shooting then speed reloading with a revolver but with some practice I get someone could get pretty fast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FbUMqoyjDw





 
Jarnhamar said:
Look at this fellow with a WW1 bolt action rifle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_a7pXWi6xo

Not bad. Sergeant York was an artist with an M1917 Enfield rifle.
( Although Gary Cooper used an M1903 Springfield. )

But, check out what you can do with a Winchester Model 1892!  :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrOPVo5GFY4

I love "chicks with guns".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDyXbcu2RXg
Language warning.
 
Bird_Gunner45 said:
https://www.snopes.com/four-times-more-stabbed-than-rifles-any-kind/

Which tends to not work in favour of your argument.

Even though the article points out that a large number of firearms-related homicides are not attributed to any specific firearms type, the vast majority of firearms-related homicides are the result of gang activity in specific neighbourhoods in major cities and the preferred weapons of gang members are pistols, for concealability. Even if the number of rifle-involved homicides doubled or tripled, there would still be more deaths from stabbings.

And, were it somehow possible to remove all firearms from lawful private use, it is highly unlikely that the homicide rate would fall. Those bent on murder are perfectly able to substitute another weapon. As the criminal element would not be influenced by such a mass confiscation, homicide rates would rise if there was any change at all. One can see the indicators of that in Chicago and other large US cities - they tend to have the most onerous firearms restrictions in the US and the highest homicide rates. Remove those cities from the equation and the US homicide rate would look like ours, our gang problems being much, much smaller.

The US does not have a firearm problem. It has a gang problem, and also a mental health problem - treatment and support being rather more difficult to find there.

And, again, even as the numbers of firearms of all types in private hands has soared, the US homicide rate has fallen dramatically.

That would not be the case if guns were the problem.

https://mises.org/blog/fbi-us-homicide-rate-51-year-low (See link for charts, including comparisons between US states and Canadian provinces and territories)

FBI: US Homicide Rate at 51-Year Low

Ask the average American if crime is falling in the United States, however, and you're unlikely to hear about how homicide is at a 50-year low.

Public Unaware that Homicide Rates Have Fallen

As Pew has reported in recent years, in fact, the American public is "unaware" that the homicide rate in the United States has fallen by 49 percent over the past twenty years. And while Pew doesn't report on it, it's also a safe bet that the public is also unaware that homicide rates have collapsed as total gun ownership in the United States has increased significantly.

Over a recent 20 year period, the number of new guns in the US that were either manufactured in the US or imported into the US increased 141 percent from 6.6 million new guns in 1994 to 16 million in 2013. That means a gross total of 132 million new guns were added into the US population over that time period.

Yes, there has been a sharp increase in US homicide rates in the last couple of years, but look exactly where it is happening:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/25/politics/fbi-crime-report-2016-homicide-rate/

US homicide rate spiked nearly 8% in 2016, FBI report finds

Communities of different sizes, from rural regions to suburbs to large urban centers, reported an increase in the number of violent crimes. Cities with a population of more than 1 million, the largest population subset measured in the FBI's report, saw the greatest uptick in violent crime at 7.2%. The number of murders in those large cities also soared, by the largest degree between population centers, increasing 20.3% from 2015 to 2016.

Beyond a narrative told by national statistics, violent crime continues to be concentrated in a handful of large cities and experts caution that local nuance is critical to understanding the overall increase.

Chicago alone accounted for about one-fifth of the national increase in murders, according to Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project at The Pew Charitable Trusts. And within Chicago, it's a small number of streets fueling that surge.

"About half of the homicide rise in Chicago took place in five neighborhoods," said John Pfaff, a professor of Law at Fordham University Law School. "Five neighborhoods in Chicago explain 10% of the national increase in homicide rates."

https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/02/daily-chart-3

Murder rates in 50 American cities

To help resolve this debate, The Economist has gathered murder statistics for 2016 - fully eight months before they are released by the FBI - for 50 of America’s most violent cities. These areas contain 15% of the country’s population and around 36% of its murder victims. Our numbers show that homicides rose in 35 of them. Since urban trends tend to track national ones, this suggests that the overall murder rate is indeed rising at its fastest pace since the early 1970s. However, today’s violence still needs to be set in historical context. Across all 50 cities, the homicide rate was lower in 2016 than it was in 2007, and for the 26 years before that.

Crunching numbers on 280,000 murder records from 1980 to 2015 shows that among our 50 cities gun use has increased from 65% to 80% of all murders. But that number varies dramatically by city. Guns were responsible for 60% of murders in New York and 85% in Chicago between 2010 and 2015. Although both places have made progress in reducing non-gun-related homicides, Chicago’s gun murder rate is five times New York’s.

Restricting ownership of firearms by private citizens does not reduce violent crime in general or homicides specifically. Those jurisdictions with the most restrictive firearms laws generally have the highest violent crime and homicide rates. There is no national standard for the US. Aside from national laws, laws vary by state, county, and city. That is why detailed and careful comparisons are necessary.

As for the most likely cause of the recent "uptick":

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/13/ferguson-effect-real-researcher-richard-rosenfield-second-thoughts

Is the 'Ferguson effect' real? Researcher has second thoughts

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/15/ferguson-effect-homicide-rates-us-crime-study

'Ferguson Effect' is a plausible reason for spike in violent US crime, study says

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2017/01/11/ferguson-effect-study-72-us-cops-reluctant-make-stops/96446504/

'Ferguson effect': 72% of U.S. cops reluctant to make stops
 
Loachman said:
'Ferguson effect': 72% of U.S. cops reluctant to make stops

Probably dates back to circa 1973,

after the riots in the 1960's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZhCJFkABLE

"Starting in 1973, affirmative action and consent decrees changed LAPD culture from aggressively pursuing criminals to laying back in police cars, taking careful and lengthy reports, while gangs ran wild in the streets and portions of L.A. were terrorized by thugs.

When I was in the field in the 1960s, our 3,400 policemen (our Civil Service rank) arrested 100,000 more criminals than do today's  10,000 affirmative action wonders.  (Attorney GARY INGEMUNSON in "Warning Bells," Thin Blue Line, July 2005, p. 13---Also L.A. Times of 13 March 1996, pp. B-1 & 3):  A “distressed Mayor Richard Riordan...said it was vexing to learn that LAPD is now making 100,000 fewer arrests, issuing over 200,000 fewer citations, and conducting over 20,000 fewer field interviews per year.”

Give no slack and take no sh#t from anyone. Confront and command. Control the streets at all times. Always be aggressive. Stop crimes before they happen. Seek them out. Shake them down. Make that arrest. And never, never admit the department has done anything wrong."

To protect and to serve : the LAPD's century of war in the city of dreams
 
When various levels of government effectively fail in preventing most bad guys from getting guns (esp. semi-auto with large magazines and now bump-stock) it is entirely logical for everyone else to consider arming themselves.  A very serious failure of US governance.  The Wild West returns?  Overall US culture, esp. Hollywood for decades, has a lot to answer for in terms of encouraging that sort of society and governance.

"Go ahead, make my day".  Eh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML86JjEyKiA

Mark
Ottawa
 
Just how would/should
MarkOttawa said:
various levels of government ... prevent ... most bad guys from getting guns
?
 
Loachman said:
One can own as many vehicles as one wants and can afford with no licence, registration or insurance required. Those are only necessary if one wishes to drive on public roads. I'd be quite happy if my PAL permitted me to use a network of public ranges whenever I chose, and not as government permission to continue to own lawfully-acquired devices on my own property without being liable for lengthy prison sentences.

...

So, yes, in that regard, treat firearms like vehicles and I'd be ecstatic.
Keep in mind, to get your car off the lot the dealership will be looking for proof of insurance and licence, and they will also get registration to the point where the government knows you own the car.

But if you are happy with applying similar rules to firearms as to what does apply to cars, then you must also be willing to accept that there is room in the USA for greater gun control because there are many places in the USA without licensing, registration, and insurance requirements.
 
My perspective, as someone who has lived and owned/shot guns in both Canada and the US, is that I'd rather have Canada's gun laws and social issues than the gun laws and social issues of the US any day.  Canada has legal ways to acquire semi-automatic weapons, and yet we don't have a similar monthly toll of massacres or a daily toll of murders.  We would do well to ask why.  Ease of access (enshrined in the Constitution) combined with deep social problems (enshrined in racial issues) make for the high rate of gun violence in the US....
 
The social problems - racial, gangs (often race-based), and lack of mental health - are key, but ease of access isn't, not by law-abiding citizens, at least, and they're the only ones affected by restrictive laws.

As I have said several times, the vast majority of homicides are gang-related, and occur in very specific neighbourhoods in large cities. Eliminate the gang problem, and the US homicide rate would look remarkably like ours. There is, strangely, no serious call to do that. It is easier to blame the tools and seek to restrict those than blame the people committing the violence and do something serious about them.

Laws do not prevent those gangs from acquiring large quantities of illegal drugs that fuel them. Laws do not prevent those gangs from acquiring the firearms that they use to protect themselves and eliminate their competition.
 
Loachman,
How many times have we defended our position. We've given the same answers to the same questions from those that have absolutely no intent of ever trying to comprimise. Save your breath.
 
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