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ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1

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ORIGINAL: BamaD

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ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1

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ORIGINAL: BamaD

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ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1

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ORIGINAL: BamaD

Not here, no.
They were effectively banned in 1997.
And most people see no need to have one either.

That is a ban.
You have already disproved your claim.
We tried that in DC and all we got was a bunch of people stabbed and beaten to death.

Not at all.
If there were NO guns to be had, take away ALL the gun stats and see what's left.
A surprisingly small number compared to what was the total beforehand.
Think about it.

After the ban more people were knifed and beaten to death than had ever been shot in DC, think about it.

Cite please??

You claim to know so much about the stats here you cite.
The between the time of the ban and 2000 the murder rate with firearms was unchanged, but the murder rate doubled. I am telling you what actually happened you are giving me pie in the sky wishful thinking.
If you don't have these figures how are you so sure it
A Failed
B That the crime increase was because of "lax" laws in VA.
C And you haven't explained why, don't feel bad, neither has anyone else, why the crime rate in Va was so much lower than in DC, even in Fairfax.
Fairfax is about 2 feet away from DC.
If you have all the facts to know you are right , you already know what I am saying is true, you just don't want to face it, because it spoils your fantasy.

No fantasy bama.
You haven't backed up ANY of your facts.
You twist words.
Not made any legit cites.
And your figures are fantasy.

I've given you cites and facts.
Go bury your head up your ass.
You just can't imagine a world without your precious toys.
The stats all over the net prove you are wrong.

Even when you come up with something half sensible, it proves to be crap.
EG: 50% rise in a very tiny insignificant number is still a tiny insignificant number.
Near eradication of a huge number in the thousands is waaay more significant than your 50% rise in a small number.

Lets take my previous post.
Deaths by stabbing AND beating in 2016 so far is 51.
Even with a 50% rise on that figure, it's still only 76.
Deaths by shooting is 153 - more than twice the deaths by stabbing and beating together even with a 50% rise.

Maths bama. Do the maths.

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ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1
Because, despite the rest of the world proving that less guns is better and safer, they believe it is their god-given right to bear arms.

If the conditions in any other country are not the same as in the US, with only the allowing of gun ownership being the difference, then any claim that the US's violence rates will drop with guns being out of the equation are, at the very least, conjecture, and little more than a shitty hypothesis at the very best.
https://youtu.be/pELwCqz2JfE
I like Whittle's final line of analysis: [paraphrased] Maybe it's not the guns, but the people holding the guns.

Most of us 'anti-gun' people aren't arguing the violence rates - just the easy deaths caused by guns, or more precisely, the prolific ownership and use of such.
Even if the level of violence were identical, the country with a gun ownership culture will have many more deaths than the one without such an in-grained culture.
And whilst gun nuts seem to think we advocate banning guns, actually we don't.
Many so-called 'gun free' countries still have guns, but the laws aren't quite so liberal and lax.
That's where the difference lies, not the banning of guns per se.

You don't give a shit about the level of violence, only whether or not a gun was involved. That's about the most myopic line of thinking I've ever heard (in the gun debate realm). You are blaming a tool, and not what's driving the decision to use the tool. Absolutely fucking stupid.
If we got rid of all the guns in the US (and I understand that's not what most anti-gun nuts are trying to do), of course there would be fewer acts of violence (including homicides) committed where a gun was involved. But, the amount of violence committed (including homicides) with other "tools" would increase, and there just might be the same amount of violence overall.
However, you reduce the things that are causing people to choose violence, and you'll have a reduction of violence (including homicide), regardless of the tool chosen.

You are missing the label, as usual, Desi.
The problem with a gun, as opposed to any other 'tool', is that you can kill someone from quite a distance.
You can't do that with other tools.
Even if the level of violence were the same, you'd have far less killings without the prolification of guns than you have in your current gun culture.
There's the difference - and it's a huge one.
It's not myopic at all.
It's simple statistics of survival rates of violence when a gun is used and when one isn't.
I'm not saying that there would be fewer acts of violence (as you seem to posit) but the number of deaths would drop significantly.
And that's the point we anti-gun people are putting forward.
It really is as simple as that.
All the stats everywhere show the difference.

quote:

ETA:

quote:

ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
However, if there were fewer people even considering killing another person, there would be fewer homicides, and fewer homicides using guns. It's a poser, for sure, but that's only because we have no way to know how many would have still killed, or attempted to kill another without access to a gun.

It doesn't matter if it's 5 out of every 100 or 5,000 out of every 100,000 - it's still 5% although there's a big difference between 5 and 5,000 numerically.
The stats most of us quote are normalised (per 100,000 capita), not actual physical numbers.
So your premise here doesn't hold true.
I would also pose this: how much easier is it to pull a gun and shoot than to assess the opponent to see if you could tackle them without a gun?
I'd wager that easy access to guns is certainly a big contribution to the number of deaths.

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quote:

ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

quote:

ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1

quote:

ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1
Because, despite the rest of the world proving that less guns is better and safer, they believe it is their god-given right to bear arms.

If the conditions in any other country are not the same as in the US, with only the allowing of gun ownership being the difference, then any claim that the US's violence rates will drop with guns being out of the equation are, at the very least, conjecture, and little more than a shitty hypothesis at the very best.
https://youtu.be/pELwCqz2JfE
I like Whittle's final line of analysis: [paraphrased] Maybe it's not the guns, but the people holding the guns.

Most of us 'anti-gun' people aren't arguing the violence rates - just the easy deaths caused by guns, or more precisely, the prolific ownership and use of such.
Even if the level of violence were identical, the country with a gun ownership culture will have many more deaths than the one without such an in-grained culture.
And whilst gun nuts seem to think we advocate banning guns, actually we don't.
Many so-called 'gun free' countries still have guns, but the laws aren't quite so liberal and lax.
That's where the difference lies, not the banning of guns per se.

You don't give a shit about the level of violence, only whether or not a gun was involved. That's about the most myopic line of thinking I've ever heard (in the gun debate realm). You are blaming a tool, and not what's driving the decision to use the tool. Absolutely fucking stupid.
If we got rid of all the guns in the US (and I understand that's not what most anti-gun nuts are trying to do), of course there would be fewer acts of violence (including homicides) committed where a gun was involved. But, the amount of violence committed (including homicides) with other "tools" would increase, and there just might be the same amount of violence overall.
However, you reduce the things that are causing people to choose violence, and you'll have a reduction of violence (including homicide), regardless of the tool chosen.

You are missing the label, as usual, Desi.
The problem with a gun, as opposed to any other 'tool', is that you can kill someone from quite a distance.
You can't do that with other tools.
Even if the level of violence were the same, you'd have far less killings without the prolification of guns than you have in your current gun culture.
There's the difference - and it's a huge one.
It's not myopic at all.
It's simple statistics of survival rates of violence when a gun is used and when one isn't.
I'm not saying that there would be fewer acts of violence (as you seem to posit) but the number of deaths would drop significantly.
And that's the point we anti-gun people are putting forward.
It really is as simple as that.
All the stats everywhere show the difference.

It certainly is myopic. You are simply treating a symptom rather than treating the cause. Owning a gun, having a gun, or having access to a gun isn't going to cause anyone to decide to commit a crime.

quote:

ETA:

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
However, if there were fewer people even considering killing another person, there would be fewer homicides, and fewer homicides using guns. It's a poser, for sure, but that's only because we have no way to know how many would have still killed, or attempted to kill another without access to a gun.

It doesn't matter if it's 5 out of every 100 or 5,000 out of every 100,000 - it's still 5% although there's a big difference between 5 and 5,000 numerically.
The stats most of us quote are normalised (per 100,000 capita), not actual physical numbers.
So your premise here doesn't hold true.
I would also pose this: how much easier is it to pull a gun and shoot than to assess the opponent to see if you could tackle them without a gun?
I'd wager that easy access to guns is certainly a big contribution to the number of deaths.

I think you missed my point. If we reduce the cause of the violence, that is, reduce the reason people are choosing to resort to violence, there will be far fewer people killed (per thousand, per million, per hundread, and in raw data). Period.

Dylann Roof had access to guns prior to going to that church in SC. Why hadn't he been shooting people prior to that? He hadn't chosen to use a gun to kill anyone. He bought his firearm in 2010. He claims to have been awakened to the white supremacy cause by the Trayvon Martin case (2012), and carried out his deed in 2015. Since access to a gun wasn't an issue between 2010 and 2015, why hadn't he been shooting people? Read about the kid. It's dead on obvious he had something wrong with him, mentally, from a young age. If access to a firearm is really the problem, why hadn't he acted prior to that?

Making it more difficult to lawfully purchase and own a firearm is primarily going to inhibit those who are lawful owners and not likely to commit a crime with a gun. But, it isn't going to inhibit the driving force behind wanting to commit a crime. It isn't going to inhibit the cause of someone wanting to kill someone else. If someone wants someone else dead, and are willing to break the law to do so, not having access to a gun will likely only change how the murder is committed.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: WhoreMods

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
I like Whittle's final line of analysis: [paraphrased] Maybe it's not the guns, but the people holding the guns.

There's a corollary to that which is less popular with second amendment fundamentalists, though: how many of these shootists would be competent, or even have the balls to try, to kill somebody without a gun?

However, if there were fewer people even considering killing another person, there would be fewer homicides, and fewer homicides using guns. It's a poser, for sure, but that's only because we have no way to know how many would have still killed, or attempted to kill another without access to a gun.

In Australia, from what I read, there was a massacre at Port Arthur resort in Tasmania in 1996. Thereafter, automatic and semi-automatic weapons ownership was banned. In the decade before the Port Arthur incident there were eleven mass killings. There have been none since. That is pretty informative.

quote:

Knives and other sharp instruments are the most common weapon used in homicide incidents. This has been a consistent finding since 1989–90 (with the exception of 1995–96). The use of firearms in homicide continues to decline, with 69 victims dying as a result of gunshot wounds in the 2010–12 financial years.

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quote:

ORIGINAL: BamaD
And if the background system had worked he wouldn't have been able to get them, every level of law enforcement of law enforcement screwed that one up.

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quote:

ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

quote:

ORIGINAL: BamaD
And if the background system had worked he wouldn't have been able to get them, every level of law enforcement of law enforcement screwed that one up.

Why didn't it work? Was the process flawed, or was it a human error?

quote:

ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri


Dylann Roof had access to guns prior to going to that church in SC. Why hadn't he been shooting people prior to that? He hadn't chosen to use a gun to kill anyone. He bought his firearm in 2010. He claims to have been awakened to the white supremacy cause by the Trayvon Martin case (2012), and carried out his deed in 2015. Since access to a gun wasn't an issue between 2010 and 2015, why hadn't he been shooting people? Read about the kid. It's dead on obvious he had something wrong with him, mentally, from a young age. If access to a firearm is really the problem, why hadn't he acted prior to that?

Making it more difficult to lawfully purchase and own a firearm is primarily going to inhibit those who are lawful owners and not likely to commit a crime with a gun. But, it isn't going to inhibit the driving force behind wanting to commit a crime. It isn't going to inhibit the cause of someone wanting to kill someone else. If someone wants someone else dead, and are willing to break the law to do so, not having access to a gun will likely only change how the murder is committed.

quote:

ORIGINAL: jlf1961

quote:

ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri


Dylann Roof had access to guns prior to going to that church in SC. Why hadn't he been shooting people prior to that? He hadn't chosen to use a gun to kill anyone. He bought his firearm in 2010. He claims to have been awakened to the white supremacy cause by the Trayvon Martin case (2012), and carried out his deed in 2015. Since access to a gun wasn't an issue between 2010 and 2015, why hadn't he been shooting people? Read about the kid. It's dead on obvious he had something wrong with him, mentally, from a young age. If access to a firearm is really the problem, why hadn't he acted prior to that?

Making it more difficult to lawfully purchase and own a firearm is primarily going to inhibit those who are lawful owners and not likely to commit a crime with a gun. But, it isn't going to inhibit the driving force behind wanting to commit a crime. It isn't going to inhibit the cause of someone wanting to kill someone else. If someone wants someone else dead, and are willing to break the law to do so, not having access to a gun will likely only change how the murder is committed.

Anti social behavior does not denote mentally unbalanced, if it did, there would be a few million people institutionalized in the US alone, and since there is no evidence that he had been diagnosed with any mental illness, it is a non issue.

None of his crimes that he had been convicted of involved violence, therefore, a back ground check would have revealed nothing to bar him from purchasing a firearm.

Nor was he convicted of a felony, which would have barred him from purchase.

In other words, there was nothing in his past that fell into a prohibited act to put him in the disqualified for purchase category.

There was evidence found after his arrest that showed he followed racist beliefs, frequented websites that promoted violence against non whites, however that in and of itself is not illegal, and talking about starting a race war or killing non whites, unfortunately is still protected under the first amendment.

In this instance, a background check revealed no red flags.

To put it in another way, he was, for all intents and purposes, a homegrown terrorist, a white supremacist that felt the only viable solution was to kill non whites.

Unfortunately, in the United States it is not illegal to believe such things, just illegal if you act on those beliefs.

So, you would have all people barred from owning guns based on the knowledge that less than one percent of people who legally purchase a firearm may decide to commit a crime with that gun?

And that is the current statistic, less than one percent of legally purchased firearms in the US are used by the people who bought them to commit a crime. There are 300 million legally owned firearms in the US today.

In 2015, there were 13,286 people killed in the US by guns.

That is a lot of people.

However, that number is all gun related deaths.

Take out accidental deaths and suicides, it drops to less than 6000. If you do the math, dividing the number of gun crime deaths by the total number of guns, that means that for every person killed by a gun, 50,000 guns were used to commit the crime.

So, either there were a lot of people missing their targets OR the people shot were hit by so many bullets there was no body left, OR more realistically, guns are not really the issue.

I think it is great how anti gun people throw numbers around, and to hear them talk, guns are the leading cause of crime related death in the US. Actually to be honest, it seems that they think that every gun owner is killing people.

They do not stop to consider the mass shootings are the rare event in US crime, at least when you consider the actual LEGAL definition of a mass shooting. But the statistics quoted by the BBC and other anti gun news media are counting all shootings in which four or more people are killed or wounded.

However, the Department of Justice, while admitting that criteria may be accurate, also points out that it is not a true definition of various incidents that occur in the US, such as drive by shootings, shoot outs between rival street and drug gangs.

The Department of Justice defines a mass shooting incident as any crime where the shooter or shooters target unarmed people specifically in a location to maximize the total number of casualties, with some sort of methodology to the incident.

In other words, unlike a drive by shooting where the shooter is not specifically targeting anyone in particular, or even aiming for that matter, but basically shooting blindly, hoping to hit someone.

This is in direct contrast to how the categorize mass shooting incidents in other countries, such as France, which the anti gun people call acts of terrorism, although mass shootings carried out by extremists in the US are not given that distinction.

The mass shooting at the Gay Club in Florida is, by those standards, a terrorist act inspired by extremist views.

The example you yourself gave, is again being handled as a terrorist act inspired by extremist racist views and ideology.

The mass shooting in California, was again, and claimed by, an act carried out by people motivated by extremist views, and is considered by the DoJ and the rest of the world's law enforcement and judicial communities, an act of terror.

With those incidents taken out of the number, not many by any standard, there are the following situations.

A group of employees killed during the commission of an armed robbery. Again, while technically a mass shooting, the intent was not to kill a group of people, but to rob the place.

And the funny thing about those incidents, along with gang violence, drive by shootings, 90% of the firearms used were not legally purchased, but either stolen or weapons that one could not buy in the US except by special permit, and those are limited to weapons produced BEFORE 1984 or were illegally modified.

So, when you take out the crimes that were not some lunatic waking up and deciding that today he was going out and killing a lot of people for the hell of it, you end up with a significantly lower number than the 400 plus mass shootings listed for 2016.

And all because you have removed the incidents that, in other countries are counted as a totally unrelated type of criminal act.

According to the anti gun folks, there were 487 mass shootings in the US.

Again, doing the math, that meant that in each incident, 616 THOUSAND guns were used in the commission of those crimes.

So, once more, it is not guns that are actually the problem, but the people who either legally get guns that should, by existing laws not be permitted to buy them, which falls back on the fact that the database that is used for back ground checks is not mandatory for every jurisdiction to participate in, and that guns are stolen and not reported, or some shit brained moron left his/her legally purchased gun laying around where their kid could get it and blow some other kid away that turned them down for a date, called them a name or were bullied.

And, unfortunately for the last series of shootings, parents being stupid is not against the law, although it should be.

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

quote:

ORIGINAL: BamaD
And if the background system had worked he wouldn't have been able to get them, every level of law enforcement of law enforcement screwed that one up.

Why didn't it work? Was the process flawed, or was it a human error?

quote:

There is a decline in the % of homicides committed by a firearm from 1996 to 2012, but there was also a decline from 1990 to 1996. Knives have been the weapon used in homicides more than firearms, for the entirety of the data set (this data is from the report dated Feb. 2015, which was the latest one listed on the site)

quote:

In 2015, there were 13,286 people killed in the US by guns.

quote:

Take out accidental deaths and suicides, it drops to less than 6000. If you do the math, dividing the number of gun crime deaths by the total number of guns, that means that for every person killed by a gun, 50,000 guns were used to commit the crime.

So, either there were a lot of people missing their targets OR the people shot were hit by so many bullets there was no body left, OR more realistically, guns are not really the issue.

quote:

ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

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ORIGINAL: WhoreMods

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
I like Whittle's final line of analysis: [paraphrased] Maybe it's not the guns, but the people holding the guns.

There's a corollary to that which is less popular with second amendment fundamentalists, though: how many of these shootists would be competent, or even have the balls to try, to kill somebody without a gun?

However, if there were fewer people even considering killing another person, there would be fewer homicides, and fewer homicides using guns. It's a poser, for sure, but that's only because we have no way to know how many would have still killed, or attempted to kill another without access to a gun.

In Australia, from what I read, there was a massacre at Port Arthur resort in Tasmania in 1996. Thereafter, automatic and semi-automatic weapons ownership was banned. In the decade before the Port Arthur incident there were eleven mass killings. There have been none since. That is pretty informative.

Really informative.

http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/mr/21-40/mr23/04_homicide-2010-12.html



The homicide rate in Australia went from, roughly, 1.7/100k to 1.2/100k from 1996 to 2012 (fiscal years end June 30).



There is a decline in the % of homicides committed by a firearm from 1996 to 2012, but there was also a decline from 1990 to 1996. Knives have been the weapon used in homicides more than firearms, for the entirety of the data set (this data is from the report dated Feb. 2015, which was the latest one listed on the site)

One analysis revealed:

quote:

Knives and other sharp instruments are the most common weapon used in homicide incidents. This has been a consistent finding since 1989–90 (with the exception of 1995–96). The use of firearms in homicide continues to decline, with 69 victims dying as a result of gunshot wounds in the 2010–12 financial years.

In 1995-96, firearms were still not used more often than knives/sharp instruments to commit homicides.

quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

quote:

There is a decline in the % of homicides committed by a firearm from 1996 to 2012, but there was also a decline from 1990 to 1996. Knives have been the weapon used in homicides more than firearms, for the entirety of the data set (this data is from the report dated Feb. 2015, which was the latest one listed on the site)

All of which has nothing to do with the disappearance of mass killings in Oz after the gun roll up, which was the point I made. Bogus response, DS.

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But it IS mandatory for a person who had his driver's license suspended for repeatedly being arrested for driving while intoxicated (even if that person had never been involved in an accident of any kind) to a national data base which insures that person will not be issued a license in any other state.

[SNIP]

It sure as hell invades the privacy of that individual.

[SNIP]

So, why is drunk driving conviction related license suspension a matter of public safety but the reporting of a person with a mental illness linked to violence not one?

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ORIGINAL: BamaD

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

quote:

There is a decline in the % of homicides committed by a firearm from 1996 to 2012, but there was also a decline from 1990 to 1996. Knives have been the weapon used in homicides more than firearms, for the entirety of the data set (this data is from the report dated Feb. 2015, which was the latest one listed on the site)

All of which has nothing to do with the disappearance of mass killings in Oz after the gun roll up, which was the point I made. Bogus response, DS.

Other than Port Arthur their mass killings with the highest body count were 4 or 5 arson attacks.

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ORIGINAL: BamaD

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ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri

quote:

ORIGINAL: BamaD
And if the background system had worked he wouldn't have been able to get them, every level of law enforcement of law enforcement screwed that one up.

Why didn't it work? Was the process flawed, or was it a human error?

Human error at every level, local cops FBI, nics.

• A Conservative interpretation of the US Constitution
  
• Personal Responsibility
  
• Help for the truly needy
  
• Limited Government
  
• Consumption Tax (non-profit charities and food exempt)
  

quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

quote:

ORIGINAL: BamaD

quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML

quote:

There is a decline in the % of homicides committed by a firearm from 1996 to 2012, but there was also a decline from 1990 to 1996. Knives have been the weapon used in homicides more than firearms, for the entirety of the data set (this data is from the report dated Feb. 2015, which was the latest one listed on the site)

All of which has nothing to do with the disappearance of mass killings in Oz after the gun roll up, which was the point I made. Bogus response, DS.

Other than Port Arthur their mass killings with the highest body count were 4 or 5 arson attacks.

Thee were 4 or 5 arson attacks and what, people sat quietly and could not escape? Bollocks.

quote:

ORIGINAL: jlf1961

quote:

ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri
Dylann Roof had access to guns prior to going to that church in SC. Why hadn't he been shooting people prior to that? He hadn't chosen to use a gun to kill anyone. He bought his firearm in 2010. He claims to have been awakened to the white supremacy cause by the Trayvon Martin case (2012), and carried out his deed in 2015. Since access to a gun wasn't an issue between 2010 and 2015, why hadn't he been shooting people? Read about the kid. It's dead on obvious he had something wrong with him, mentally, from a young age. If access to a firearm is really the problem, why hadn't he acted prior to that?
Making it more difficult to lawfully purchase and own a firearm is primarily going to inhibit those who are lawful owners and not likely to commit a crime with a gun. But, it isn't going to inhibit the driving force behind wanting to commit a crime. It isn't going to inhibit the cause of someone wanting to kill someone else. If someone wants someone else dead, and are willing to break the law to do so, not having access to a gun will likely only change how the murder is committed.

Anti social behavior does not denote mentally unbalanced, if it did, there would be a few million people institutionalized in the US alone, and since there is no evidence that he had been diagnosed with any mental illness, it is a non issue.

quote:

According to a 2009 affidavit filed for Mann's divorce, Roof exhibited signs of obsessive–compulsive disorder as he grew up, obsessing over germs and insisting on having his hair cut in a certain style.

quote:

None of his crimes that he had been convicted of involved violence, therefore, a back ground check would have revealed nothing to bar him from purchasing a firearm.
Nor was he convicted of a felony, which would have barred him from purchase.
In other words, there was nothing in his past that fell into a prohibited act to put him in the disqualified for purchase category.

quote:

Roof had a prior police record consisting of two arrests, both made in the months preceding the attack.[19][20] On March 2, 2015, he was questioned about a February 28 incident at the Columbiana Centre in Columbia, in which he entered the mall wearing all-black clothing and asked employees unsettling questions. During the questioning, authorities found a bottle of what was later admitted to be Suboxone, a narcotic used either for treating opiate addictions or as a recreational drug; Roof was arrested for a misdemeanor charge of drug possession. He was subsequently banned from the Columbiana Centre for a year. After he was arrested again on April 26 for trespassing on the mall grounds, the ban was extended for three additional years.[9][12][21]

According to James Comey, Roof's March arrest was written as a felony, which would have required an inquiry into the charge during a background check examination. However, it was legally a misdemeanor charge and was incorrectly written as a felony at first due to a data entry error made by a jail clerk. Despite this, Roof would not have been able to legally purchase firearms under a law that barred "unlawful user[ s] of or addicted to any controlled substance" from owning firearms.[22][23]

quote:

There was evidence found after his arrest that showed he followed racist beliefs, frequented websites that promoted violence against non whites, however that in and of itself is not illegal, and talking about starting a race war or killing non whites, unfortunately is still protected under the first amendment.
In this instance, a background check revealed no red flags.
To put it in another way, he was, for all intents and purposes, a homegrown terrorist, a white supremacist that felt the only viable solution was to kill non whites.
Unfortunately, in the United States it is not illegal to believe such things, just illegal if you act on those beliefs.
So, you would have all people barred from owning guns based on the knowledge that less than one percent of people who legally purchase a firearm may decide to commit a crime with that gun?

quote:

And that is the current statistic, less than one percent of legally purchased firearms in the US are used by the people who bought them to commit a crime. There are 300 million legally owned firearms in the US today.
In 2015, there were 13,286 people killed in the US by guns.
That is a lot of people.
However, that number is all gun related deaths.
Take out accidental deaths and suicides, it drops to less than 6000. If you do the math, dividing the number of gun crime deaths by the total number of guns, that means that for every person killed by a gun, 50,000 guns were used to commit the crime.
So, either there were a lot of people missing their targets (See my above comment about gun control) OR the people shot were hit by so many bullets there was no body left,

OR more realistically, guns are not really the issue.

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I think it is great how anti gun people throw numbers around, and to hear them talk, guns are the leading cause of crime related death in the US. Actually to be honest, it seems that they think that every gun owner is killing people.
They do not stop to consider the mass shootings are the rare event in US crime, at least when you consider the actual LEGAL definition of a mass shooting. But the statistics quoted by the BBC and other anti gun news media are counting all shootings in which four or more people are killed or wounded.
However, the Department of Justice, while admitting that criteria may be accurate, also points out that it is not a true definition of various incidents that occur in the US, such as drive by shootings, shoot outs between rival street and drug gangs.
The Department of Justice defines a mass shooting incident as any crime where the shooter or shooters target unarmed people specifically in a location to maximize the total number of casualties, with some sort of methodology to the incident.
In other words, unlike a drive by shooting where the shooter is not specifically targeting anyone in particular, or even aiming for that matter, but basically shooting blindly, hoping to hit someone.
This is in direct contrast to how the categorize mass shooting incidents in other countries, such as France, which the anti gun people call acts of terrorism, although mass shootings carried out by extremists in the US are not given that distinction.
The mass shooting at the Gay Club in Florida is, by those standards, a terrorist act inspired by extremist views.
The example you yourself gave, is again being handled as a terrorist act inspired by extremist racist views and ideology.
The mass shooting in California, was again, and claimed by, an act carried out by people motivated by extremist views, and is considered by the DoJ and the rest of the world's law enforcement and judicial communities, an act of terror.
With those incidents taken out of the number, not many by any standard, there are the following situations.
A group of employees killed during the commission of an armed robbery. Again, while technically a mass shooting, the intent was not to kill a group of people, but to rob the place.
And the funny thing about those incidents, along with gang violence, drive by shootings, 90% of the firearms used were not legally purchased, but either stolen or weapons that one could not buy in the US except by special permit, and those are limited to weapons produced BEFORE 1984 or were illegally modified.
So, when you take out the crimes that were not some lunatic waking up and deciding that today he was going out and killing a lot of people for the hell of it, you end up with a significantly lower number than the 400 plus mass shootings listed for 2016.
And all because you have removed the incidents that, in other countries are counted as a totally unrelated type of criminal act.
According to the anti gun folks, there were 487 mass shootings in the US.
Again, doing the math, that meant that in each incident, 616 THOUSAND guns were used in the commission of those crimes.
So, once more, it is not guns that are actually the problem, but the people who either legally get guns that should, by existing laws not be permitted to buy them, which falls back on the fact that the database that is used for back ground checks is not mandatory for every jurisdiction to participate in, and that guns are stolen and not reported, or some shit brained moron left his/her legally purchased gun laying around where their kid could get it and blow some other kid away that turned them down for a date, called them a name or were bullied.
And, unfortunately for the last series of shootings, parents being stupid is not against the law, although it should be.

• A Conservative interpretation of the US Constitution
  
• Personal Responsibility
  
• Help for the truly needy
  
• Limited Government
  
• Consumption Tax (non-profit charities and food exempt)