Re: I am so sick of the idiots on CNN

That was 11 years ago, and the situation has escalated drastically since then. This was a unique case, and atypical.

Further, the kid was some kind of messed up with a history of mental illness who should have not been able to purchase any type of firearm at all.

Finally, if you can tell me one valid reason a regular citizen would have to own an AR-15 or AK-47 that isn’t ludicrous, I’ll be stunned.

I can’t believe the people defending this. It’s not 1776. Tyranny, the reason for your constitutional right to own a firearm is interesting, considering If we needed to rise up against the government, they’d just use drones and other technology to wipe out the threat before it started.

quozzel

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Feb 15, 2018, 7:43 PM

I actually disagree.

Assault-type rifles are banned in Australia, for instance. You can still get them...but the price has escalated to about $30K per rifle, which puts it out of the reach of the average young male malcontent, who is usually minimally employed...and that's the profile of the guy who does things like this.

Keep in mind also that successfully networking within the criminal community requires a couple of other things as well:
1) To buy a gun on the black market, you have to deal with scary people...and the fact is the kind of person who does something like this is almost by definition a coward. Most of them don't have the cajones to drive to the hood or local mafioso and stand there in a back alley with cash in trembling hands and hope the crooks don't rip them off. Spree shooters go after soft targets specifically because they're inadequate and ineffectual and angry about it.
2) Spree shooters are almost universally socially inept to begin with...again, most of these guys aren't going to even know who to begin to ask anyhow.

Also, self-employed crooks by definition have a sense of self-preservation that a retailer - manned by a $10-an-hour employee - just doesn't have. A lot of them are simply not going to sell a gun to a psycho with steam coming out of his ears and hate for the world in his eyes, especially if they think it's going to bring the Feds to their doorstep. People get all excitable-like when a bunch of kids get shot, you know? Crooks don't like that. Only Wal-Mart or Bass Pro Shop don't really care.

Again, this doesn't cure all ills. It wouldn't have stopped the Clock Tower Sniper in Austin, who used a hunting rifle and was tagging people at 200+ yards with it. Wouldn't have stopped the VT shooter, who used handguns. But those guys had rare skill, for spree shooters. Wouldn't have stopped the casino guy who hit Mandalay Bay either - he had age and money and in no way fit the profile of your typical spree killer, somebody like him probably would have gotten his guns and struck no matter what laws were on the books.

Would it have stopped or slowed 85% of these guys from getting an AR-15 and racking up, though? Yeah.

So it ain't a cure or a solution, but it would assuredly reduce the body count, and there are just way too many dead kids and normal folk in schools and churches getting hit right now. While I just do not ever see a political climate where handguns, hunting rifles, or shotguns are ever banned in this country, the assault rifle attacks on kids have to stop...and they're going to be stopped.

I think that's inevitable at this point.

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I am so sick of the idiots on CNN

P&R Board is THAT way >>>>>>>