People can use any weapons they want in mass attacks.
Cho (the VA Tech shooter) used two handguns, no long guns at all, and that attack was more lethal. [1]
The Monash University shooting (7 people hit) doesn't count as an Austrialian mass shooting? It took place in 2002, after the new Australian law. [2]
Finally, I'm sorry to say this and I know it gets old, but the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. Even if the arguments in favor of banning guns were convincing, you can't maintain respect for the constitution or the rule of law while enacting laws that violate the constitution.
The proximal reason for this event was the killer's mother, who it seems drove him insane with her paranoid end-of-the-world mentality.
This is actually an effective argument for comprehensive gun control. An assault weapons ban would not prevent those two mass killings you cite. But, however, having a comprehensive system where, for example, mental health records are tied to gun purchase background checks would have prevented Seung-Hui Cho from purchasing handguns.
Gun control is not just one policy. It's a broad policy with many possible facets: an assault weapons ban, federal standards for background checks, cracking down on sales at gun shows, eliminating loopholes, tying mental health records to background checks, the list goes on.
EDITS (reply to below, additional things constantly added):
I'm not naive enough to say that comprehensive gun control is going to eliminate all gun violence. I'm saying that it's a step forwards towards reducing gun violence.
>We arguably have comprehensive drug control. How well does that work?
This is a non sequitur. Just because the drug war has failed and the phrase "comprehensive drug control" shares two words with the phrase "comprehensive gun control" is not enough to logically lead to the conclusion that gun control is/will be a failure. The comparison needs to be elaborated. Let me elaborate on a few differences: people don't get addicted to guns like they do with drugs, someone using a drug can not directly physically injure someone else, drugs are much smaller and easier to hide (EDIT: for smuggling on an individual basis, not for a cartel), guns are hard to mass produce without people noticing. Drunk driving is not really relevant unless there is a large trend of accidents caused by cocaine/heroin/marijuana (rather than just alcohol). Guns are much less profitable for cartels than drugs are (for reasons of addiction).
I think nitpicking over the specifics of an assault weapons ban does not really counter my point. I meant semi-automatic weapons with magazines/cartridges (and automatic weapons). Even if my definition misses something, I'd be willing to just concede that and expand my definition. Yes, it's obvious that a ban implemented today would not stop Adam Lanza, because the guns are already bought. It might reduce the number of deaths of an Adam Lanza 5 years from now (I'm acknowledging of course that he also had two handguns with him).
To be clear, I don't propose that we should have a blanket handgun ban. It's simply not a realistic goal (politically and in terms of all the guns already out there). There are ways to improve gun control without banning all handguns.
I also think that the mental health system in America is broken and needs fixing. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
Can you please avoid using the term "assault weapon" without defining it? If you mean all semi-auto rifles, say that. If you mean scary looking rifles with certain evil cosmetic features, like the ineffectual, now-expired 1994-2004 ban dealt with, say that instead.
[edit] Okay, you've defined it, although pretty much all semi-auto rifles have magazines; I think the distinction you're after is whether they have detachable magazines, which affects how fast they can be reloaded. What you're asking for goes far beyond the 1994 assault weapons ban.
Furthermore, by "ban" do you mean grandfathering in old firearms, like the 1994 ban did, or would you run a buy-back program to "get them all"? That's in quotes because if you think such a buy back program will get most "assault weapons", I think that's wishful thinking. It's also less likely to be politically viable. At most, the anti-gun establishment will be able to reenact something roughly akin to the 1994 ban, maybe expanding what it covers a bit, and even that would come at a very heavy political cost.
None of your proposals would probably stop another Lanza. Most of the people crazy enough to drive their kids crazy like this won't obey a federal mandate to turn in their guns.
What you call "comprehensive" gun control, would have to be a ban on semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines, semi-auto handguns and revolvers, because all of those can be quickly reloaded. If it could be enforced, it might work, but there's no way to either collect them all or prevent new guns from being smuggled in (or stolen) without extensive 4th-amendment violations. Not to mention that it would require a constitutional amendment (or one of the pro-gun supreme court justices could be replaced with an anti-gun justice, I suppose).
This needs to be re-stated: What are you calling an "Assault Weapon"? The federal Assault Weapon ban pertained to cosmetic features only, not the rate of fire. If the firearm could only fire one round, with each pull of the trigger, but possessed a cosmetic feature (pistol grip adjustable stock, etc) then it was illegal as an "Assault Weapon". This ban had nothing to do with automatic weapons. Both the CDC and the United States DOJ published reports after the Assault Weapons ban stating that it had little to no effect on violent crime.
The problem is, the media sensationalizes guns, and what you think of when someone says "Assault Weapon", is actually a military grade "Assault Rifle", which is very different. An Assault Rifle is a firearm that can fire multiple rounds with one pull of the trigger. Semi-automatic firearms can not do this, and they can not be changed to do this without expensive modification, by a highly skilled machinist that is licensed to do so. Just to be clear, Assault Rifle's are very regulated by the ATF, are very expensive, and have a long (months) process required in order to get one.
Not to stir the pot too much, but all of these shootings are happening at schools, which are Federally mandated "Gun Free Safety Zones". These nut jobs know that no one there can defend themselves. I'm not saying everyone should have a gun. I am saying that when the bad guys can't tell who has one and who doesn't, they are going to be a lot less likely to do regrettable things
While you're right about bad guys in the form of criminals / gang members, I don't really think the people going into schools to kill are in a state of mind where they worry about what kind of resistance they meet.
> people don't get addicted to guns like they do with drugs
I agree with you on this one -- but only fifty percent of the way. Some people love guns. But it's more like being addicted to video games -- the addictive behavior doesn't directly provide a chemical substance which alters the brain's behavior the way drugs do.
> Someone using a drug can not directly physically injure someone else
Have you looked at drunk driving statistics lately? The altered brain states caused by drugs result in lethal behavior toward innocent bystanders. Depending on your definition of "directly," your statement may be technically true regardless, but that doesn't make them any less dead.
> Drugs are much smaller and easier to hide.
Only for the end-user. They're less easy to hide if you're a drug cartel shipping them thousands of miles, by the ton, on a regular basis.
Speaking of cartels, you do realize that gun control would be loved by organized crime? It gives them something else illegal but common that they can sell for dear prices.
That's America's problem as well. The majority of gun homicides committed in the United States are either directly drug related, committed by gangs who exist primarily because of drug prohibition, or committed by felons previously arrested for drug crimes.
We had comprehensive alcohol control, too, and that was with enough national support to get an amendment to the Constitution passed. That worked out almost as well the drug ban.
In the US, starting a conversation with "we need comprehensive gun control" is going to mostly a conversation with oneself. I am not in favor of a gun ban, but I'm completely OK with there being some additional requirements before being allowed to acquire on.
How would you deal with the stockpiles built up by career criminals and people who actually believe in the Constitution? (Of course, comprehensive gun control would legislatively unify these two categories.)
We arguably have comprehensive drug control. How well does that work?
I don't understand why you think that criminal record checks, mental health checks, etc. would make people who own guns into "career criminals".
As brianchu pointed out, the Virginia tech shooter was involuntarily detained because of mental illness about 15 months before he bought his guns. He then killed 32 people with them. Would prohibiting a law prohibiting people like Seung-Hui Cho from buying guns for a few years really be a step along the road to tyranny?
More to the point, how is it that 15 months after being involuntarily committed Cho was worse than he started? That sounds a lot more like a failure of the mental health system than a lack of proper gun control.
The anti-gun myth implicitly assumes that if you have someone who, given access to guns, would shoot a bunch of people, but you take those guns away, that person suddenly becomes harmless. I don't want anyone like that walking around free in society; I don't want them buying guns, and I don't want them driving cars or buying anything at hardware stores or pool supply stores. They're a clear danger to themselves and to others. However, I'm not going to support gun control measures just because the mental health system isn't perfect.
Adding regulations that restrict what free people can do or buy based on their past history doesn't tend to be very effective. Ex-cons who are disqualified from owning guns, and who cannot buy them legally, have no trouble acquiring firearms through other means.
>More to the point, how is it that 15 months after being involuntarily committed Cho was worse than he started? That sounds a lot more like a failure of the mental health system than a lack of proper gun control.
Treatment for mental problems isn't an exact science. It may be that he would have been worse had he not been committed. Personally I don't want more restrictions on guns, but I find the argument that the mental health system is the point of failure in these kinds of crimes to be pretty unpersuasive.
>Would prohibiting a law prohibiting people like Seung-Hui Cho from buying guns for a few years really be a step along the road to tyranny?
If I'm understanding your use of the double prohibiting correctly - maybe. The devil, of course, is in the details. Once you have a mechanism to declare people unfit to possess guns the reasons for such a declaration will grow in number. You need only look at the behavior of 20th century governments like the USSR to see the way psychiatry was used to marginalize people the government considered a threat.
I don't remember the specifics of the Cho case - clearly if someone has made explicit threats or is hearing voices he shouldn't possess a firearm. But there's a huge grey area there - conditions like depression are pretty common in people who function perfectly normally.
Time goes on; people with guns die, bullets are used and the police arrives where that happens, guns and bullets get oxidized and everyday become harder to get. The career criminals usually want to kill the competence (other carer criminals) or the police; two sides that would remain armed.
>We arguably have comprehensive drug control. How well does that work?
Straw man; when killing another person with cocaine becomes a trend we can start discussing this.
It's worth pointing out that your definition of "assault weapon" covers, say, the Glock 22 handguns used by, among others, the police. They are semi-automatics (one trigger squeeze = one round fired, no manual removal of the old cartridge case or manual chambering of the new round) with swappable clips, eliminating the majority of your reload time.
It's also worth pointing out that a double-barreled (or heck, even a semi-auto non-magazine-fed) shotgun would not fall under your definition of an assault weapon, and there are few better tools for causing mass carnage in a small confined area, so even if magazine-fed weapons were all magically eliminated, the crazies would still have access to weapons that they could accomplish their goals with.
> Finally, I'm sorry to say this and I know it gets old, but the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. Even if the arguments in favor of banning guns were convincing, you can't maintain respect for the constitution or the rule of law while enacting laws that violate the constitution.
Well, there are two things to unpack there.
First, the 2nd Amendment is one of the most vaguely-worded sections of the entire document. If we're relying on the Constitution alone, there's really nothing about it that's cut and dry. It's even so ambiguously worded that the Supreme Court has had to make a decision about what its syntactic structure should be considered to be. Worse, I've a relative who's actually known as an expert on whether one bit of ink is a comma or an ink blot. Meaning two things: One, even that's something that's ambiguous enough that learned people are capable of disagreeing about it, and two, the question is relevant enough to how the sentence should be interpreted that there's a demand for people to develop expertise on the question. That's how ambiguous and poorly-worded this particular piece of legislation is. With all that in mind, there's a strong argument to be made that one's interpretation of the 2nd Amendment's meaning has more to do with one's pre-existing opinions than it does to do with what the sentence actually says.
Second, there is a well-known process for creating laws that are specifically designed to go against what the current version of the Constitution says. Such laws even have a name. . . and that name happens to be the second word in its name. In light of that, to suggest that the 2nd Amendment means that it's impossible to enact legislation that alters the law to be other than what the 2nd Amendment says - or whether doing so would violate rule of law - is patently silly. Did the 21st Amendment violate rule of law?
the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. Even if the arguments in favor of banning guns were convincing, you can't maintain respect for the constitution or the rule of law while enacting laws that violate the constitution.
What is with you Americans and the Constitution? If back then female circumcision would have been considered a good idea and somehow got wrote in the constitution then you will be defending it now days because it is in the constitution?
If the constitution is wrong, it needs to be changed, is just that simple.
The reason we Americans are so strongly tied to our Constitution is multifaceted, but one of the key tenets is that it is a so called "living document" and allows itself to be modified via an amendment. The criticism that it should not be made illegal is a criticism that we are directly in violation of a document with extremely clear language. Instead of doing so, we should do the "correct" thing and pass an amendment to correct the original language with our current up-to-date understanding.
It is my personal opinion that the reason we don't is because enough people disagree with modifying it, and so it has to be curtailed slowly (rightly or wrongly.)
What's funny is that many changes were pretty fundamental legal changes, such as the abolition of slavery, massively extending the right to vote, allowing a wide range of pornography & allowing abortion & contraception. To claim those as "merely updating our understanding of what the founding fathers wanted" is misleading, but eh, if it makes you sleep at night.
I'm not sure how you could call those changes "fundamental". Some of them were pretty far-reaching in terms of resulting impact, but they did not fundamentally alter the Constitution.
They altered US society in some pretty massive ways, altered who controlled the government, and had large and fundamental impact on many people's lives.
Well, that's a debatable point. What is the core concept? That the people should elect the government? Well it went from white landowning males electing the government to all adults (excl. prisoners)? Does that count?
>If the constitution is wrong, it needs to be changed, is just that simple.
Yep. And there are two methods for doing just that. But they both require a fair degree of consensus, and in the US the consensus in recent years has shifted toward more freedom regarding firearms instead of less.
You should be a bit clearer about what you mean. There's a big difference between advocating that the government ignore the Constitution, and advocating a constitutional amendment. Your last sentence hints at the latter, which is hopefully your position, but "obsession with the Constitution" would by definition include the willingness to amend it, since the amendment process is itself contained in the Constitution.
I don't believe anybody here would disagree with you--now, please explain to what degree you believe the 2nd amendment to be wrong, right, or outdated.
(a) the US seems to working its way to tyranny just fine with the 2nd amendment intact.
(b) many other countries seem to do a pretty passable imitation of freedom without a 2nd amendment.
Update:
(c) on closer examination, it almost seems like an "opiate for the people" kind of thing: people being lulled into thinking they are free because they can kill innocent children with their high-powered weapons when the fact is that actual armed insurrection against the government is as ludicrously impossible with those weapons as it is without.
At the same time, real freedoms have been largely eliminated, habeas corpus is gone, 4th amendment largely gone, freedom of speech going away, freedom of assembly AWOL, elections manipulated and legislators bought, the president can have anyone incarcerated indefinitely without charges and without a trial, or summarily executed by simply labeling them a "terrorist" (and those labels fly looser every day). Focusing on these issues will have a much larger impact on actual liberty than trying to prevent meaningful gun control.
Yet, yay, we are "free" because we have our Glocks. Yeah, right.
"freedoms"; what a concept, freedom to what exactly? freedom to easily kill I am guessing... because that being the case you should allow the posetion and creation of nuclear weapons by any USA citizen; those things give a lot of freedom to kill.
Funny you mention my country; because just here in my City, the 3° biggest of South America, the amount of murders have reduced significantly since the ban of weapons in the streets; its called Bogota.
And you can keep playing to the hypothesis that someday you will need a revolution and guns will be useful, in real life in the present there is just people dying because you have associated your national identity with abusing gunpowder.
There is nothing positive about guns; your group illusion of "self-protection" is quickly diminish by the fact that legal guns many times end up in the hands of the criminals, provoking accidents or in hands of mentally unqualified people... so even 1 death is enough.
>There is nothing positive about guns; your group illusion of "self-protection" is quickly diminish by the fact that legal guns many times end up in the hands of the criminals, provoking accidents or in hands of mentally unqualified people... so even 1 death is enough.
The idea that "even 1 death is enough" to take away a basic human right is just plain idiotic. How many times have assaults and murders been deterred by a gun? That doesn't show up in homicide statistics, does it?
How many times a gun has ended in murderer's hands after being bought legally? That doesn't show up in homicide statistics either, does it?
Human rights as popularly known are the global rights established by the UN and I am pretty sure they don't mention guns. Or it must be a list of human rights you created yourself that I am not aware of.
>How many times a gun has ended in murderer's hands after being bought legally? That doesn't show up in homicide statistics either, does it?
Eh, actually they show up in homicide statistics as, you know, homicides.
>Human rights as popularly known are the global rights established by the UN and I am pretty sure they don't mention guns.
The UN has no particular legitimacy in the recognition of rights. Human rights are intrinsic, so to a certain extent they're subjective. Clearly you don't believe the right to self defense is a human right, but I think most people would disagree with you.
> Eh, actually they show up in homicide statistics as, you know, homicides.
Just like you have your own human rights maybe this is from your own statistics too because the cdc.gov and other recognized institutions show nothing about the legality of the weapons used in murderess.
Human rights are the rights that should be respected by anyone; if you need some sort of self-defense by definition you are taking actions derived from a violation of your rights; so your self-defense is already out of any kind of human rights paradigm.
And self-defense is one of the most ambiguous concepts there are; if Palestinians could use an atomic bomb in Israel it would be self-defense? I think it would be, but it also would be wrong, very wrong.
USA is the developed country with the highest death rate by gunshots[1]; as much as you like to believe your own words data is not at your side.
>Human rights are the rights that should be respected by anyone; if you need some sort of self-defense by definition you are taking actions derived from a violation of your rights; so your self-defense is already out of any kind of human rights paradigm.
There's no logic in that statement. I have a right to self defense, and for the state to deprive me of the means of self defense is a violation of my rights.
>USA is the developed country with the highest death rate by gunshots
Irrelevant. I don't care about suicides or legitimate shoots. For the purposes of this discussion only murders matter.
I was just answering to OP who talked like the fact that it is on the constitution is somehow a valid reason not to change the law.
>Finally, I'm sorry to say this and I know it gets old, but the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms.
But ok; I am going to pile on the other hundreds of comments making noise and tell you what I think America should do.
Decriminalize all drugs first (or at the same time). Then change the constitution and proclaim nobody should have guns except the police/military and some special cases (some bodyguards, bank guards); despite the popularity of "guns don't kill people" is pretty clear that where guns are the number of gunshot victims are always higher. Anyone who thinks they can overthrow the USA government from inside is delusional, before there is even 1000 people organized all forms of communication would be shout down; even internet. Your only hope to overthrow the USA government if such thing ever is required is that some generals and soldiers of the USA army itself revel.
Obviously this change would need to happen gradually; first the high caliber guns and then progressively the others; the government should pay for the guns so citizens have one more incentive to give them away.
> Anyone who thinks they can overthrow the USA government from inside is delusional, before there is even 1000 people organized all forms of communication would be shout down; even internet.
"Overthrowing the government" makes it sound like an offensive operation, which is indeed fairly impractical. However, the real value of a large armed population is that it makes martial law and military occupation extremely difficult. It's a defensive advantage against an oppressive government. Look at the difficulty the US military has faced in its attempts to occupy Iraq, with a much smaller, poorer, and less sophisticated armed population. If the US government wanted to simply commit genocide against its population, sure, it could use chemical or nuclear weapons with little chance of civilian resistance, but there's not a huge advantage for even the most insane oppressive regime to do that.
> Then change the constitution and proclaim nobody should have guns except the police/military and some special cases (some bodyguards, bank guards).
Constitution or not, this is a deeply disturbing recommendation for many reasons, the most obvious of which is the fact that many people use guns for subsistence or income supplementation.
I don't see any reason why we couldn't overthrow our government. It happens all over the world on a regular basis. Don't confuse "don't want to overthrow the government" with "can't overthrow the government".
So does the amount of resources available to potential rebels.
And you're making a classic mistake here. Revolutions don't succeed in the face of unified military opposition. In any country. The scenario in a successful US revolution would be a schism or complete mutiny of the armed forces.
You are very naive; take a look around, unless somehow most Americans stop being fat slow ignorant arrogant elitist self-rightous fools you have a pretty incompetent guerrilla; wish most likely would use the guns just to kill other citizens who disagree with the revolution and many would die because those have guns too. The 2nd amendment was wrote in a time were the enemy was an external entity (Britain), now it would be pointless and more nasty... well, actually it already is.
I have to chuckle when you, of all people, call me naive. I can only think your opinion of Americans is formed solely by watching television, as you have no idea what you're talking about.
Well, I don't expect someone to understand when he lives in a country full of drug traffickers and communists. Probably gun control is the right thing for you.
If you were still interested in having a fruitful conversation you could had ask what data do I have to confirm Americas wouldn't make successful revolutionaries; or at least you would try to explain me why citizens against and pro-government would't kill each other. But instead you decided to call me names.
Let me give you a history lesson; the people you call "drug traffickers" were actually formed as guerrilla and is still called a guerrilla today (FARC and ELN groups); to start a revolution against the government, unfortunately it didn't go so well so the years flied by and they slowly became a rural mafia that kidnap and kill anyone that gets in their way and had long forgot what their purpose is. Another situation that can happen in any country, including America. So yeah, you are very naive about the possible conclusions of an armed revolution.
>If you were still interested in having a fruitful conversation you could had ask what data do I have to confirm Americas wouldn't make successful revolutionaries; or at least you would try to explain me why citizens against and pro-government would't kill each other.
As if you could actually know something like that better than I.
>But instead you decided to call me names.
Which was entirely appropriate after your last comment.
And yes, I'm aware of the genesis of drug traffickers in Columbia. Your condescending attempt at a "history lesson" isn't required.
I don't think I'm being particularly arrogant by pointing out your knowledge of my country is of the primary school variety. Even if you had a more average grasp of US society and politics, you still wouldn't know as much as an American. That's just basic common sense, something which seems to be in short supply on your end.
>And you avoided many points, like civiliant against civilian violence in the scenary of a civil war.
That's not a "point" at all. How does it relate to the discussion?
Well; you say that guns are good because if a revolution is needed is better if the citizens have guns; the problem is that in revolutions the civilians who doesn't want it also have guns; so it gets really violent without affecting any "tyrant".
Of course it depends on the circumstances. Typically a tyrant maintains power by buying off a small portion of the total population. It can be as little as 10%. Somebody like Marcos in the Philippines comes to mind.
The US has a peculiar attachment to its current constitution and it's founding fathers. There seems to be a semi religious adherence to that one document and those original people, as if the US constitution is the first and only document that can grantee liberty and freedom. Many arguments in the US seem to be around "what did the founding fathers really mean?" The hell what they meant, they were wrong!
>The US has a peculiar attachment to its current constitution and it's founding fathers.
We have an attachment to the document because that's the blueprint for our government. A nation of laws and not men. The founding fathers some people are more attached to than others.
Many people (like me) believe if you're going to have a written constitution the meaning of the document is fixed, so you have to use secondary sources to be clear on how it was understood when it was ratified. Thus the arguments about "what did the founding fathers really mean".
>The hell what they meant, they were wrong!
No, they weren't. They understood tyranny, having lived under it. You'd think after the 20th century people would be a little leery of investing too much power in their government, but I guess Santayana was right after all.
Cho (the VA Tech shooter) used two handguns, no long guns at all, and that attack was more lethal. [1]
The Monash University shooting (7 people hit) doesn't count as an Austrialian mass shooting? It took place in 2002, after the new Australian law. [2]
Finally, I'm sorry to say this and I know it gets old, but the U.S. constitution identifies a right to keep and bear arms. Even if the arguments in favor of banning guns were convincing, you can't maintain respect for the constitution or the rule of law while enacting laws that violate the constitution.
The proximal reason for this event was the killer's mother, who it seems drove him insane with her paranoid end-of-the-world mentality.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seung-Hui_Cho#Weapons
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monash_University_shooting