http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/02/us/las-vegas-stephen-paddock-father-fbi-most-wanted/index.html I'm sure you guys have seen this by now. His dad was a bank robber and considered a psychotic? Maybe he too was a psychotic? Doesn't that have a high probability of passing down the family tree?
So 35 guns and explosives in the home, and no one knew anything? Color me skeptical. From the sounds of the survivors in these interviews, there's gonna be a LOT of people with PTSD. Let's hope they subscribe to the notion that "what happens in Vegas..."
I can tell you that from my office, we were all shell shocked. About half my department had to leave early. We all know people that were there. It's really very different when it happens in the town you live in. I've seen the Strip dim lights for other attacks quite a few times, but when I saw the Eiffel Tower go dark for us it really hit home.
I'm sure that whatever his reasons were they were as goddamned as crazy as it gets. Even so, he doesn't quite seem in that Adam Lanza or Seung-Hui Cho category where the shooter is a paranoid lunatic. I can see how someone could be severely deranged and appear more or less normal to the people who know them well. Even in those cases though, there's usually some indicator that leads toward an explanation. "I would never have imagined him doing this, BUT..." He was a heavy gambler with multiple divorces. Sure, he lived on the edge, but the lack of propensity to violence or pent up rage is what really gets me.
= Mental illness doesn't have to be as visible as your Adam Lanzas or Jared Loughner. One of my best friends has an addictive personality, gambles to excess, had issues with cocaine in his early 20s, if there's a spectrum for narcissist he's on it on the low to mid range. Stuff that isn't apparent unless youve been friends with the guy for a while, stuff that can make you pause at how much he doesn't think of others or can't control compulsion. Add that to say some insanely stressful life events compounded together, divorce, loss of job, etc I could see someone with his issues having an acute breakdown that ended with violence.
Fucking christ! How do you have that many guns and someone not notice dude is stockpiling some shit?! 23 guns, literally almost a dozen per shooting perch if spread out evenly, doesn't even make sense from a tactical standpoint. Absolutely fucked up as that is to think about that way. That being said, guns don't kill people -- people kill people. A gun has no ill intent. It isn't evil. It doesn't know right from wrong. It's the shooter who makes that gun do evil things, so simply having guns doesn't make you a bad person anymore than having a lot of, say, owning a lot of crosses makes you a good christian.
I know. It's unreal. At least from this press conference it sounds like they have an angle they're pursuing other then "WTF" and we may know something tomorrow. They said they hear the rumors also and don't want to release anything until they're 100% sure. One other odd thing, on my way home tonight they had multiple officers on the roof of police HQ. Maybe that's SOP during a crisis? I don't know, but I've never seen it before.
I just found out one of my nieces was attending a country music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday. She got tired and left the festival early and went to a casino. That may have been the best tired of her life. Her roommate stayed at the show, but thankfully was not shot and got away. Needless to say, she is not that fond of outdoor concerts as of yesterday.
I have a sincere questions for the gun owners of this board. Do you all think there is any legislation that can be inacted to reduce the chances of these type of things happening? It seems that when we've had the gun discussion before that most gun owners think the legislation proposed is stupid and not really helpful. I haven't disagreed with the points people have made and I'm of the opinion that gun owners should be leading the way for sensible gun legislation. I don't buy the idea that we just have to accept this as a part of life in America. I have ideas of my own, but I'm sure gun owners wouldn't be too happy about them, however if gun owners aren't willing to lead the way some other group will and that would probably lead to more restrictions than if gun owners were at the table for the discussion of what should be done about this.
Its not really up to gun owners to come up with a solution to mental illness, is it?. Gun control doesn't stop knife attacks in London or someone running down a crowd with a truck in Nice, which killed as many people as the Vegas shooter. That being said, there a few things that should be done to curb these attacks and the process in general: 1) Stop dicking around with state-by-state gun laws. Enact a federal firearms license or reciprocity to at least make the laws consistently applied. Hell, in Massachusetts whether or not you can get a gun varies by town. Now you can sue the town's police department (who controls the licensing process here) and get your way, but why add the unnecessary red tape? 2) Make an exception for the HIPAA Privacy Rule when it comes to firearms purchasing. A licensing authority should be able to determine whether or not you were treated for mental illness within a certain timeframe. This will provide for a strong background check process, which a majority of NRA members support. 3) Banning arbitrary firearm builds and configurations is window dressing. Just banning an AR-15, when the Congressman or Senator (ahem, Chris Murphy) sponsoring such a bill cant tell you what the "AR" stands for, is all you need to know. Fully automatic guns are difficult but not impossible to get. But that doesnt matter. Do we just want to reduce the number of casualties in shootings or prevent them altogether? Raising the penalty for gun violence to a federal crime with an automatic mandatory sentence is a better approach. In addition, currently you can get a gun with a misdemeanor on your record. Add DUIs, minor drug charges, and white collar crimes to the list. Theres no reason we cant require gun owners to have a perfect record. Modifying a semi-automatic to go full auto should be a mandatory life sentence. 4) Currently the government does very little research when it comes to gun violence, surprisingly. The NRA lobbys against it, the hard-nosed gun control groups advocate for it. There needs to be some form of unbiased research to study it to at least yield some meaningful data on the subject thats not tainted with bias.
I agree with all except #3. Expanding the criminal background check to these additional areas, in my opinion, won't help. There is already a large black market for firearms for felons. If you expand the requirements further, you essentially expand the black market as well. Enacting new laws doesn't curb demand. Look at prohibition and the drug war for proof. The problem with the black market is it requires more violence because you can't depend on the Government protection for banking, transactions, transportation, etc. So, while I believe it will curb LEGAL gun sales, which I don't really think is the end goal, it has a high likelihood of increasing violence in my opinion. Truth be told, I really don't see an answer to this problem. With today's technology in 3D printing and CNC machines, anyone with a little technical know-how can make firearms on their own that are no longer traceable. Eventually, the next generation of weaponry that the military will use will invariably attempt to be pushed down to the civilian market by manufacturers (because profit), it would be prudent to get ahead of that or at least try to get ahead of it now. Though, again, I'm not a proponent of that as I think of the 2nd Amendment's purpose being more than just talking about giving people a gun.
I also disagree with the misdemeanor part of #3. In fact, I think that certain felonies should not preclude someone from owning a gun either. Does a DUI that results in bodily injury mean they can't or shouldn't responsibility own a gun? If someone gets caught in the wrong crowd and breaks into a house at 18 or 20 should they not be able to protect their family at 40? Generally speaking I'm in the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" camp, though I hate the connotation of identity politics anything. I think the solution lies in finding out what kind of people are most likely to kill other people, and then doing everything we can to prevent the truly criminally dangerous of those people from owning guns. Combine that with greater research and education into how to effectively help people who are in need, as far as mental illness and people "down on their luck." Dixie has a felony (I think?) and if you did a medical dig on me you'd find that I still have PTSD anxiety and depression. Should we not be allowed to own guns? Are we a danger to society with them? Hell nah.
You literally post the same thing here 3-4x a night with little to no recollection of doing it. You regularly post about injuring yourself while doing mundane things. You have discussed your issues with trying to remain sober and failing. You fucking put BBQ sauce on seafood. I’d say you probably shouldn’t own a gun. But that’s just me.
Yes, neither you or Dixie should be allowed to own guns. And I say that as a card-carrying member of the NRA and an ardent 2nd Amendment supporter. I have all the sympathy in the world for your PTSD and depression, and it sucks that you are afflicted with them. However although owning guns is a right, its not an inalienable one. For someone with your condition, I would require you to have to medical clearance. For Dixie, he should be banned for life.
Or we could do things the way countries that have solved this problem do them. Mandatory safes in homes with registered gun owners, and very strict laws on how you can transport guns, how to prevent gun theft and how to transfer them to new owners. Mandatory gun education. This seems like a no-brainer, but...well, where did YOU learn about gun safety? Paw-paw? In a country with 400 million guns, it's mind-boggling that there's no standard of gun education, even for concealed carry programs state to state or county to county. Enforcement of the actual gun laws on the books. This is what taxes pay for kids: enforcement of laws. Closing the loopholes that make it easy to anonymously acquire guns (gun shows), straw man purchases, etc. I don't think that tying gun ownership to mental health, arrest records or anything else is a really good idea. Think about the fucked up definitions of mental health (in some states, homosexuality was a mental health issue), and the utter bullshit arrests that some people get (cough cough black people cough). And it creates even more unsolvable questions: what happens to the guns these people already own? Who's in charge of finding those guns and...what? Confiscating them? Good fucking luck with that. I don't think I'm an outlier when I say I'm not surrendering family heirlooms because I got diagnosed with depression, or I got an unpaid ticket. I think the biggest obstacle to this is ignorance. We don't know enough about who owns what guns in this country, and many gun owners (myself included) are uncomfortably ignorant of the gun laws. We don't study shootings, we don't keep track of gun sales/transfers with enough details and we rely FAR too much on anecdotal stories instead of raw data. I also like out of the box programs like "Gun Bail", where you can pay bail or court fees by turning in unregistered guns. This is the run of the mill gun problem: the black market for guns that are used to commit crime in places like Baltimore/Chicago that compile a murder total bafflingly high. By effectively turning a black market into a grey market, you start to eliminate the availability of firearms, which in my humble opinion is a step in the right direction.
I would support this actually. I'd happily go through the process and to get that clearance. I guess using myself was a bad example, as the whole "dude with ptsd goes on rampage" is basically a movie trope at this point. Every condition is different, it has a spectrum, and no two people are alike in their manifestations of that. I'd happily support anything that requires medical clearance, especially if there was a formal process for it akin to background checks. I think that would really help. Mandatory check, fingerprinting (which is federal instead of just state), and medical clearance sounds like a great place to start. Though your counter argument is criminals will always find a way to get a gun, but if it prevents even one shooting then in my opinion it is worth it.